Rethinking psychosocial rehabilitation in mental health

Summary points Psychosocial rehabilitation is central to recovery-oriented mental health care, yet its uptake remains uneven because of persistent conceptual, methodological, organisational, and implementation barriers. Greater conceptual clarity is needed through stakeholder dialogue to establish a common set of core principles that can be adapted across diverse cultural and health system contexts. Meaningful co-creation with people with lived experience and their families should be embedded throughout the research and implementation cycle, from priority setting and intervention design to evaluation, scale-up, and dissemination. Evidence synthesis should adopt component-based and mechanism-informed approaches to identify the active components of psychosocial rehabilitation interventions and the mechanisms through which they produce change. Psychosocial rehabilitation should be recognised as a core component of mental healthcare, integrated from first contact and delivered across the continuum of care.

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Journal
PLoS Medicine
Published
2026-11-10
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1005285
Primary Topic
Mental Health and Patient Involvement
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Rethinking psychosocial rehabilitation in mental health

Laura Asher, Sergio Barlati, Eleonora Prina, Karli Montague-Cardoso et al.
PLoS Medicine
Mental Health and Patient Involvement
article

Rethinking psychosocial rehabilitation in mental health

Laura Asher, Sergio Barlati, Eleonora Prina, Karli Montague-Cardoso, Ioana A. Cristea, Marianna Purgato, Corrado Barbui, Sudipto Chatterjee, Charlotte Hanlon, Parth Sharma, Sandra Ferreira
article en

Abstract

Summary points Psychosocial rehabilitation is central to recovery-oriented mental health care, yet its uptake remains uneven because of persistent conceptual, methodological, organisational, and implementation barriers. Greater conceptual clarity is needed through stakeholder dialogue to establish a common set of core principles that can be adapted across diverse cultural and health system contexts. Meaningful co-creation with people with lived experience and their families should be embedded throughout the research and implementation cycle, from priority setting and intervention design to evaluation, scale-up, and dissemination. Evidence synthesis should adopt component-based and mechanism-informed approaches to identify the active components of psychosocial rehabilitation interventions and the mechanisms through which they produce change. Psychosocial rehabilitation should be recognised as a core component of mental healthcare, integrated from first contact and delivered across the continuum of care.

PLoS MedicineVol. 23(11)
Public Library of Science (US), University of Verona (IT), University of Padua (IT), University of Nottingham (GB), Sangath (IN), Institute of Mental Health (GB), Addis Ababa University (ET), Cochrane (GB), University of Brescia (IT), University of Edinburgh (GB)
Mental Health and Patient Involvement
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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