The recovery of hope: a personal journey through paradigms toward emancipatory practice

Abstract

This study traces my transition from being a mental health nurse to becoming a facilitator of an education programme, the Health and Wellbeing course, for those in recovery from mental illnesses. Within this transition, my journey from disease-focused paradigms toward emancipatory paradigms is evidenced by my application of the recovery approach to my teaching. The 'recovery approach' proposed by the Mental Health Commission (MHC) in November 1998, and other models of health, are explored using the methodology of descriptive/interpretive philosophical inquiry, autobiographical narrative and a dialectical research design. An autobiographical narrative method of research reveals my lived experience as a nurse in transition. I draw from the philosophies of phenomenology and existentialism to present excerpts from my journals, exemplars, poetry and artwork which illuminate epiphanies occurring as I integrate health paradigms in the design of the Health and Wellbeing course. Within this process the recovery approach is revealed as being consistent with the teaching principles of the Health and Wellbeing course. My journey uncovers the spiritual dimensions of experience which underpin my current thinking on change, suffering, hope and recovery. The dialectical research design reveals paradoxes and transformations in nursing, medical, psychological, and humanistic paradigms within the New Zealand socio-political context from the 1970s to 2003. The way these are integrated into my practice as an educator, becomes evident in the dialectical research cycles of being, thinking, developing a project, the encounter of teaching, making sense and communication. These cycles reveal my being in the roles of nurse and educator and the thinking through of paradigms that lead to the design and philosophy of a Health and Wellbeing course, the encounter of teaching, and the communication of insights gained. The choice I make to reveal my journey in the context of an academic thesis achieves my main objective which is to show the importance of nurses and educators developing a reflective consciousness when working with sufferers of mental illness. This reflective consciousness involves three levels: The primary level, or raw experience; the social level, or our socio-political contexts and social values, and, the realized level, insights gained about knowledge and experience. This is necessary because mental health nursing and teaching is a deeply interpersonal process, involving a high degree of self-awareness at every level of our being.