An empowering medical model of mental health care.

Despite substantial differences between the medical model and empowerment theory, there is no reason that mental health consumers cannot simultaneously seek recovery from illness and powerlessness by using the best of both strategies. Perhaps an individual with mental illness can regain full control over life events only after psychopathology has dissipated, as suggested by the medical model, and perhaps this control promotes illness recovery, as suggested by the empowerment theory, but a combined approach may be most effective.