I’ve just watched this wonderful talk (from 2001) by Bill Anthony, one of the pioneers in recovery-based care in mental health. [Bill starts his talk at 25’20” into the video]
Bill describes a metaphor for explaining a paradigm shift, such as the paradigm shift to recovery-based care in mental health.
This metaphor is that mankind once thought the world was flat. This understanding led to certain questions such as, “How far do I sail before I fall off the end of the earth?” Once mankind learnt the world was round, these questions were redundant. We asked different questions.
Bill points out that the Recovery Vision is changing the questions we are asking ourselves. He provides some examples of ‘earth is flat’ questions and ‘earth is round’ questions. For example:
Earth is flat: “What do we do with our unmotivated clients?” Bill calls this a ‘yesterday’ question.
Earth is round: “What do we do with our unappealing programmes?” This is the ‘today’ question.
I wonder how many have you have worked out the link between these two questions? Check out the talk to find the answer to this and some other intriguing comparisons. Bill’s talk is really that good!
And if you’ve got time, please watch the whole video, which includes other speakers.
