Soteria (psychiatric treatment)

This article contains promotional content. Please help improve it by removing promotional language and inappropriate external links, and by adding encyclopedic text written from a neutral point of view. (August 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Soteria model is a milieu-therapeutic approach developed to treat acute schizophrenia, usually implemented in Soteria houses.^[1]

Based on a recovery model, the common elements of the Soteria approach include the use of primarily nonmedical staff, who do not prescribe or administer antipsychotic medication to patients, and the preservation of residents' personal power, social networks, and communal responsibilities.^[2]

Soteria houses provide a community space for people experiencing mental distress or crisis and have no restraint facilities. Loren Mosher, founder of the first Soteria house, believed that people with schizophrenia did, in fact, recover from the illness without the use of neuroleptics in a supportive home-like environment.^[3]

Soteria houses are often seen as gentler alternatives to the psychiatric hospital system, which is perceived as authoritarian, hostile, or violent, and overly reliant on the use of psychiatric (particularly antipsychotic) drugs.^[4]

Some psychiatrists contest the Soteria model's validity due to a perception that it diverges from the widely accepted biopsychosocial model, as well as research quality concerns.^[2][5][6]