At RECASAS, we believe that healing begins when people are seen not as patients with symptoms, but as human beings with stories.
For too long, emotional distress has been framed as a medical problem — something to be diagnosed, treated, or managed. Yet behind every so-called symptom lies a story of power, threat, and meaning: what has happened to us, how it has shaped us, and how we have learned to survive.
This is the understanding at the heart of the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) — a groundbreaking approach developed by psychologists Lucy Johnstone and Mary Boyle for the British Psychological Society. Instead of asking “What is wrong with you?”, it invites us to ask:
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What has happened to you? (How has power operated in your life?)
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How did it affect you? (What kinds of threats did it create?)
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What sense did you make of it? (What meaning does it hold for you?)
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What did you have to do to survive? (What strategies or “threat responses” have helped you endure?)
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What are your strengths and resources?
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What is your story?
These questions replace diagnosis with understanding. They help us see distress not as illness but as an intelligible human response to adversity and imbalance of power — whether that power is social, economic, cultural, or interpersonal.
Beyond the medical model
The medical model assumes that distress arises from something wrong inside an individual — a chemical imbalance, a disorder, a defect.
The PTMF offers a different lens: one that understands suffering within its social and relational context. It recognises that trauma, discrimination, poverty, and loss are not background details — they are part of the story itself.
It also gives space for creativity, spirituality, and culture as vital sources of meaning and resilience.
For RECASAS, this shift is essential. It allows us to build a culture where people can reclaim authorship of their stories — through writing, reading, art, film, and shared reflection.
Instead of treatment plans, we create spaces for imagination and mutual learning. Instead of compliance, we nurture curiosity and agency.
How we use the PTMF at RECASAS
The questions of the Power Threat Meaning Framework quietly inform everything we do.
In a writing group, they might appear as prompts: What have you learned to do in order to feel safe? What do you wish others understood about your story?
In a community conversation, they might guide how we listen: not for symptoms, but for meaning.
In our structure, they remind us to distribute power — to design RECASAS as a participatory, peer-led initiative rather than a hierarchical institution.
The PTMF also connects us with international movements such as Intentional Peer Support and the Academy of Peer Services in New York City — approaches that, like RECASAS, value lived experience, dialogue, and mutual growth over diagnosis and control.
Towards a new culture of understanding
Adopting the Power Threat Meaning Framework is more than an intellectual choice.
It is a cultural stance: a commitment to social justice, to equality, and to restoring meaning where systems have taken it away.
It tells every participant: You are not broken. You are responding to life in the best way you know how.
And it invites all of us — as peers, as citizens, as creators — to imagine mental health care beyond the walls of psychiatry.
Join us
Over the coming months, RECASAS will offer opportunities to explore this framework more deeply — both online and in person — through reading circles and creative study groups.
If you wish to help build this new culture of understanding, you can:
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join our upcoming Power Threat Meaning Study Group
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contribute your time, expertise, or financial support as part of our growing circle of Mitgestalterinnen and Gesellschafterinnen
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or simply share this vision with others who believe that stories — not diagnoses — should guide how we heal.
Together we can reimagine what it means to support one another — with power shared, meaning restored, and creativity at the center.
If you would like to explore the Power Threat Meaning Framework in more depth, the full publication by Lucy Johnstone and Mary Boyle is freely available from the British Psychological Society: https://www.bps.org.uk/member-networks/division-clinical-psychology/power-threat-meaning-framework
