Recovery Resources
What Is Recovery?
Recovery is the process of improving your sense of your own value and self-worth, the quality of your relationships and community connections, and your overall satisfaction with the person you are and the quality of your life.
Some say it's a lifelong process or journey; others say it's an outcome or goal. Either way, it involves choosing, setting and achieving a series of intermediate goals that lead you in the direction you want your life to go.
Until recently, the idea that people with severe mental illness could recover was considered radical by mental health treatment and research professionals.
But, in the last 20 years too many people with severe mental illness have gotten well, stayed well, and told their stories of how they did it. The possibility of recovery can no longer be denied. Many people can recover completely, and EVERYONE can recover somewhat.
Recovery is a concept the "patients" taught their doctors, not the other way around. It is now considered a "mainstream progressive" idea, no longer radical.
Major universities are sponsoring serious recovery research, and the federal government is publishing materials on how to recover, written by Mary Ellen Copeland, who has, herself, recovered from severe mental illness. The New Hampshire Division of Behavioral Health, in its revised statement of purpose in 2000, adopted recovery as its primary mission.
Everyone has a different definition of recovery because everyone's idea of a "better life" is different. It might involve getting a job, or more education, or finding some more rewarding kind of volunteer work. It might involve becoming less isolated and more connected to the community, or more connected to a community that is broader than just the "mental health world." It might involve improving one's self-esteem, or learning to relax and have fun more easily. It might involve integrating a past traumatic experience so that the feelings connected with it exercise less control over your life in the present. It might involve mastering coping skills that would reduce the need for psychiatric medication. It might involve getting out of a bad relationship or into a good one. It might involve getting a car or a better, safer, more pleasant place to live.
What Recovery Involves
- HOPE is a prerequisite. You can't get better unless you believe deep down that it's possible, and can hold on to that belief even when you suffer setbacks.
- PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for the choices you make is essential. To recover, people must stop blaming their families, their illness, their treatment team, their medication or their ex-spouse for the fact that they cannot improve their lives. This is hard for many people because being a helpless victim has some rewards, while personal responsibility carries some risk. And mental health professionals sometimes play into the helpless victim routine by saying people with mental illness are not responsible for what they do and cannot change the way they are.
- SETBACKS are part of recovery. Recovery is not a straight line. Change is always risky, and some risks don't work out well. The trick is to conceive of setbacks as learning experiences, not defeats.
- SUPPORT is essential, mutual supportive relationships with people who are committed to helping you recover. Supporters can be family members, friends, health care professionals, or anyone else. But it's a very good idea to look for some supporters among people who are themselves in recovery from severe mental illness, who can truthfully say, "I've been there and I know how it feels."
- EDUCATION is vital. You must learn everything you can about your illness and the treatments and medicines you are receiving, and what alternatives are available.
- SELF-ADVOCACY means knowing what you have a right to demand of other people, or your treatment professionals, and learning appropriate ways to meet those needs.
- COLLABORATIVE TREATMENT is the only kind of mental health care that can support recovery, including a collaborative approach to prescribing medicine. This requires professionals who listen and respect your wishes and needs, and clients who are educated and able to advocate for their needs. The old-fashioned "I'm OK and you're sick so do what I tell you" therapeutic relationship prevents recovery. Professionals and clients both share responsibility for avoiding this pitfall.
- Recovering Your Mental Health, SMA-3504
- Developing a Recovery and Wellness Lifestyle, SMA-3718
- Building Self-Esteem SMA 3715
- Action Planning for Prevention and Recovery, SMA 3720
- Making and Keeping Friends, SMA-3716
- Dealing with the Effects of Trauma, SMA-3717
- Speaking Out For Yourself, SMA-3719.
Though everyone has a different definition of what a better life would be, there are now enough recovery stories out there to allow us to make some meaningful generalizations about what recovery involves.
More Information On Recovery
All of the recovery topics covered in the recovery section, and other topics are covered in a series of 7 short self-help booklets available free of charge from the federal governments Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (http://www.samhsa.gov).
The self-help guides, written by a survivor of severe mental illness, Mary Ellen Copeland, are called:
They can be ordered separately or all together from the SAMHSA website (http://www.samhsa.gov) or by calling 1-800-789-2647, where multiple copies can be requested.
