The consumer recovery vision: will it alleviate family burden?

Research on families of people with severe mental illness has identified significant caregiving burden. Although professional interventions generally assume that families have a major role in the client's progress, the focus of the consumer movement on recovery through empowerment, peer supports, and consumer-run services may have important, as yet unquantified, effects. Keeping in mind the functional heterogeneity of individuals with mental illness, it is suggested that consumer emphasis on autonomy may provide the major relief for family burden.