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PurposePeople who access health services often have a range of needs that require the involvement of members from a multidisciplinary team. Teaching future health professionals about the importance of a multidisciplinary approach can be challenging. The aim of this paper is to describe a project called Recovery Camp that enhanced multidisciplinary health education through experiential and immersive engagement with people experiencing mental illness.MethodFuture health professionals and people with a lived experience of mental illness took part in Recovery Camp — an innovative five-day therapeutic recreation initiative in the Australian bush. Results are presented in a case study format and provide the reflective quotes of participants. The quotes were analyzed using a content analysis to identify core concepts.ResultsAnalyses identified a common appreciation of multidisciplinary learning. The interactions among students and between students and consumers, promoted inter-professional practice and a holistic understanding of mental health care.ConclusionsAn immersive multidisciplinary approach, embedded within a recovery-based programme, enhances students’ understanding of the significance of multidisciplinary mental health care and treatment.Implications for RehabilitationPeople with a lived experience of mental illness have a range of complex needs that require involvement of members from a multidisciplinary rehabilitation team.This study suggested a multidisciplinary, experiential, immersive health education experience — drawing on the principles of therapeutic recreation — can promote inter-professional rehabilitative practice and an appreciation for holistic mental health care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many people who live with a serious and enduring mental illness describe themselves as leading sedentary and highly routine existences as a result of the constant need to manage symptoms of their illness. Twenty-seven people with a lived experience of mental illness volunteered to participate in a pilot Therapeutic Recovery Camp project. The camp aimed to envelope consumers in an experience of therapeutic recovery via a strengths-based five-day outdoor camp held in the Australian bush. The opportunity to get out of their comfort zone by participating in physically and mentally challenging activities appealed to many camp participants due to inactivity and unchanging daily existences. Individual participant expectations were collected via a survey precamp and the degree to which these were met was measured postcamp using a Likert rating scale. Consumers rated the camp as a success. Participants took full advantage of the challenges while also embracing the stress caused by leaving their comfort zone. Overall, engagement in therapeutic recreation as experienced during the Recovery Camp facilitated a sense of purpose toward overcoming challenges brought about by living with a mental illness. This is an important component of a person’s recovery journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental health consumers are often socially isolated and may lack the basic leisure competencies which serve as a critical building block for community ( re) integration. Therapeutic recreation ( TR), as a treatment modality for people with mental illness, is yet to be fully embraced in the Australian health-care setting, despite having a strong historical foundation in North America. A team of academics created a TR experience, termed Recovery Camp, which was designed to collectively engage consumers and future health professionals drawn from a range of discipline areas. The 2014 Recovery Camp was staged over a five day period and involved 28 adult consumers living with mental illness. Consumers undertook a diverse range of experiential recreation activities engineered to facilitate individual engagement and to encourage the development of positive therapeutic relationships and teamwork. The camp atmosphere was deliberately community-based and recovery-oriented, valuing the lived experience of mental illness. Using a 2 × 3 design involving a camp and comparison group, the study sought to examine the influence of a TR programme on the self-determination of individuals with a mental illness. Those who participated in the Recovery Camp reported an increase in awareness of self and perceived choice post-camp, relative to the comparison group. While this difference remained significant for awareness of self at three-month follow-up, there was no significant difference in perceived choice between the two groups at follow-up. Study findings serve to support the role of recreation within a recovery framework to positively change the health-related behaviour of mental health consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]