PIEs, SPIEs, and Homo SAPIENS: a response from social psychiatry and social therapy

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to offer a commentary on Psychologically Informed Services: A Good Practice Guide, a recently published operational guidance document on developing psychologically informed environments (PIEs) in services for homeless people.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is an invited opinion piece and comment, based on the specialist experience and viewpoint of the author as a rehabilitation psychiatrist, a medical historian of the therapeutic community movement, and a member of the “enabling environments” development group.FindingsThe new operational guidance is welcomed, with some provisos. Specifically, the author is concerned that, in the prevailing commissioning culture, and the individual pathology‐based presumptions of the “medical model”, a focus on the “psychological” may be taken to mean a stress on individual psychology and therapeutic techniques derived from individual therapy. This may distract attention from the need to work with the whole social environment, with peer support and with recognition of the importance of informal interactions, as opportunities for growth, if services are to work with the whole person.Originality/valueServices that wish to develop as PIEs need to take care to work with the whole person, and their social selves, and to develop enabling environments that recognise and work with the importance of all relationships.