For people with mental health problems, hope lies at the heart of the individual's ability and willingness to take on the challenge of rebuilding recovery. Acceptance of what has happened can be too terrifying in the absence of hope:
How can we accept the illness when we have no hope' - Why should one pile despair on top of hopelessness? The combination could be fatal. So perhaps people are wise in not accepting the illness until they have the resources to deal with it. (Deegan 1996).
- Hope counteracts depression and diminishes the risk of a person giving up: - `In the context of life threatening situations, hope functions as a life saving force for individuals who have been overwhelmed by despair.' (Russinova 1999).
- Hope motivates: - Deegan (1996) has drawn a distinction between optimism and hope. She characterises optimism as being like a cheer-leader - there for a brief period and then gone. Hope is a belief in one's self, a willingness to 'hang-in there' to persevere over the long haul that is involved in picking yourself up when you are knocked down. Hope is not a bolt of lightening, rather, it begins as a 'small and fragile flame' that can be either be fanned or snuffed out.
It might be assumed that hope is related to the severity of a persons problems: - the fewer the problems, the greater the hope. However, research conducted by Landeen et al (2000) shows that this is not the case. Among 100 people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, they found no relationship between hope and symptom severity, nor was hope clearly related to financial factors, the number of social contacts, or the living situation.
They found a strong relationship, however, between hope and quality of life. They concluded that material and clinical status are less important than the meaning that people attribute to their life situations.
They argue that this points to the importance of discovering individual sources of meaning and value. Unfortunately, mental health services often fail to do this. Numerous people have described the way in which contact with such services and interactions with mental health workers have left them feeling discouraged and hopeless. Deegan (1990) has described this phenomenon as 'spirit breaking':
'The experience of spirit breaking occurs as a result of those cumulative experiences in which we are humiliated and made to feel less than human, in which our will to live is deeply shaken or broken, in which our hopes are shattered and in which giving up; apathy and indifference become a way of surviving and protecting the last vestiges of the wounded self.'
Restoring hope - shedding the protection afforded by withdrawal, apathy and indifference - is a risky journey. It involves daring to trust people, risking disappointment, failure and further hurt. People may be reluctant to trust mental health workers and services which they believe have let them down in the past. People with a diagnosis of schizophrenia have identified four things that they see as important in 'igniting or nurturing their hope' (Kirkpatrick et al 2001). More |
