The meaning of empowerment in the psychiatric treatment process of people with severe mental disorder: results from a focus group study

Background/Objectives: Empowerment is regarded as a crucial factor in modern psychiatric treatment. However, there are no suitable, standardised measurements to assess empowerment in the process of psychiatric treatment. Therefore it is neither possible to mark potential reasons for a missing empowerment orientation nor can we precisely determine the importance of empowerment for the treatment outcome. In this study we examined the meaning of the term empowerment for people with affective (ICD-10 F30-F39) and schizophrenic (ICD-10 F20-F29) disorders as the basis for the development of a standardised instrument.…