Special Issue of Fountain House Mental Health Clubhouses as Hybrid Self-Help Organizations

Abstract

This special issue introduces researchers, practitioners, and the public to the self-help and mutual aid aspects of Fountain House mental health Clubhouses. These articles explore beyond the frameworks of the older conventional concepts of psychosocial rehabilitation; instead, they focus on newer emerging concepts of mutual aid, peer support, empowerment, and recovery. Fountain House Clubhouses have been studied and reported in the scholarly literature separate from that of mental health consumer-run (or service-user-run) self-help organizations (CROs) as they have been seen as so disparate that they have little in common. This article proposes a conceptualization of Clubhouses and CROs as mental health organizations that focuses on their mutual aid features—on what they have in common as self-help organizations. The intention is to provide a bridge so that the two literatures can be brought together to enrich each other. But, before we build this bridge (“Conceptually Integrating Clubhouses with other Mental Health CROs” below), we need to Introduce this Special Issue. Fountain House New York, the original Fountain House, is profusely thanked and greatly appreciated for its generous role in the idea for this special issue and for providing support through hosting a symposium and a subsequent meeting for researchers to present and critique their papers on Clubhouses. Fountain House is clearly devoted to independent research as their hosting role came without any strings attached. Kudos and thank yous to the Guest Editor Magnus Karlsson whose coordination of the project brought it to fruition. He encouraged