Reintegration Reads: November 2015

Each month, the Center for Reintegration will pick a book that touches upon mental health and give a brief review of it on our blog. Read along with us as we enjoy memoirs, research findings, biographies, novels, and academic texts as they relate to mental well-being and reintegration for all. If you have any suggestions, please email us at reintegration@reintegration.com 

For the month of November, we are going to be reading Fountain House: Creating Community in Mental Health Practice by Alan Doyle, Julius Lanoil, and Kenneth Dudek. This book explains the importance of community to the recovery of individuals living with mental illness.  

Fountain House is a clubhouse located in New York City,  a working community designed to help individuals living with mental illness regain confidence, learn skills, find a sense of belonging, and move towards achieving goals such as steady employment, affordable housing, an education, healthy lifestyles, and finding friends and colleagues. Those who decide to join a clubhouse become members, and together with trained staff workers, members are responsible for the everyday running of the clubhouse. This book explains how this model works, backed by psychiatry and strengths-based social work.

There are now over 300 clubhouses throughout the world, Fountain House being the first, and the majority of them are found in the United States. To learn more about the clubhouse model, visit our Resources page.