National Empowerment Center

The National Empowerment Center (NEC) is an advocacy and peer-support organization in the United States that promotes an empowerment-based recovery model of mental disorders. It is run by consumers/survivors/ex-patients "in recovery" and is located in Lawrence, Massachusetts in Essex County.

The self-stated mission of NEC is to carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope and healing to people who have been labeled with mental illness diagnosis. It argues that recovery and empowerment are not the privilege of a few but a process that is possible for everyone to embark on and find help with. Although unconventional to those accustomed only to a narrow medical model, the model is part of a recovery movement that comprises an emerging consensus.

NEC and other groups are working to implement the transformation to a recovery-based system recommended by the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. It operates a toll-free information and referral line. It organizes and speaks at conferences. Its staff have published in professional journals, scholastic books, popular press and alternative publications. NEC has "been involved" in many national boards and committees and in policy consultations at the White House, in Congress, in federal agencies such as HUD, the Social Security Administration, HCFA, the Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation, and The President's Commission on Disability, and at the regional and local level with organizations such as HMOs and state divisions of mental health programs. It has developed educational, training and self-help resources. NEC staff have been featured on CNN, USA Today, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio and talk and radio shows in the U.S., Canada, Europe and other countries.

NEC conducted qualitative research with people who were severely mentally ill but have met criteria for recovery, from which 10 major principles of how people recover were extracted:

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