A professional's guide to personal recovery
For mental health professionals, recovery means moving away from a focus on treating illness and towards promoting well being.
What's the difference?
Professionals must begin to consider and understand service users at a personal level. Usually, this can be achieved by considering, or focusing on four ways in which someone feels or thinks about themselves and their life.
These are:
- Hope which often plays a part in how someone explains their own recovery
- Self-identity, including current and future self-image
- Meaning in life, including life purpose and goal
- Personal Responsibility – the ability to take personal responsibility for one’s own life.
(Anderson et al, 2003)
A personal recovery orientated mental health service is organised to support individuals take on these four tasks.
Stages of personal recovery
These principles become more or less significant depending on what stage of recovery the person is experiencing, or which aspect of the process you as a professional are involved in.
These pages can help you to think about how to incorporate the principles of personal recovery into your work. This includes the the assessment stages and the supporting stages of recovery.
The possibility of crisis and its impact on someones recovery is also very important.
