Decision making related to the use of psychiatric medication in the recovery process is complex. This paper describes some of the challenges involved in making decisions about using psychiatric medications. It also details an innovative intervention to support shared decision making in psychiatry. The program includes a peer-run decision support center and a software program to support the activation of medical staff and clients in shared decision making.

In this paper, I explore aspects of the lived experience of using psychiatric medication in order to demonstrate the complexity of the issues that are involved in making the decision whether or not to use it in the recovery process. Traditional notions of compliance with medical authority do not adequately capture the challenges involved in this process. Shared decision making is a person centered alternative to traditional notions of medical compliance and is consistent with psychiatric rehabilitation's emphasis on the centrality of client choice in service provision (Anthony & Liberman, 1994). Finally, in this paper I will describe an innovative software program and peer run decision support center located in a psychiatric medication clinic. The program is aimed at activating both clients and medical staff to participate in shared decision making.

When I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager, my psychiatrist told me I had an illness from which I could not recover, and that I would have to take neuroleptics for the rest of my life. In effect, I was given a prognosis of doom (Deegan, 1988): I was told, “You have a disease called schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a lot like diabetes. Just like diabetics have to take medicine for the rest of their lives, you will have to take antipsychotic medications for the rest of yours. Then you might be able to cope.” My experience of receiving this information is not uncommon, and has been described by others (Onken, Dumont, Ridgway, Dornan & Ralph, 2002; Schmook, 1994