Social model recovery and recovery housing

Abstract

Recovery housing is an important resource for many in their recovery from alcohol and other drug use disorders. Yet providers of recovery housing face a number of challenges. Many of these challenges are rooted in stigma and bias about recovery housing. The ability to describe the service and purported mechanisms of action vis-a-vis an overarching framework, approach, or orientation could also go a long way in adding credence to recovery housing as a service delivery mechanism. Several aspects of social model recovery are often explicitly built or organically reflected in how recovery housing operates, yet describing recovery housing in these terms often does little to demystify key features of recovery housing. To more fully cement social model recovery as the organizing framework for recovery housing this article aims to: review the history, current status, and evidence base for social model recovery; comment on challenges to implementing the social model in recovery housing; and delineate steps to overcome these challenges and establish an evidence base for social model recovery housing.

Keywords:

• Recovery
• social model
• recovery housing
• recovery residences
• peer support
• experiential knowledge

Acknowledgements

The funding agency had no role in the writing of the report or the decision to submit the paper for publication. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIAAA or the National Institutes of Health. In addition to the funders, the authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Tom Hill, MSW who organized a Technical Expert Panel on recovery housing while serving as a Senior Advisor at the National Council of Behavioral Health that stimulated conversations on the topic of recovery housing and social model recovery addressed in this manuscript.

Ethical statement

The research in this paper does not require ethics board approval.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Work on this manuscript was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to the Public Health Institute [R01AA027782; Mericle, PI].