The need to have clearer understanding about what we mean when we talk of "recovery", where ever we sit in the mental health system is more glaring in its importance as health systems work to evolve, improve and potentially cooperate with consumers, clinicians, families, service providers and government leaders.
Andrew Shepherd from the "Mental Health Elf" in England, is encouraging discussion through his post Staff understanding of recovery-orientated mental health practice: A critical note of caution?
http://www.nationalelfservice....8ec63bc10c-335580045
He notes that the research paper Le Boutillier C, Chevalier A, Lawrence V, Leamy M, Bird VJ, Macpherson R. et al (2015) Staff understanding of recovery-orientated mental health practice: a systematic review and narrative synthesis. Implementation Science, 10(1), 445–458. [Open Access] - http://www.implementationscience.com/content/10/1/87
identified different descriptions of recovery, (see below) and this leads us to needing to consider the organizational influences of our understanding of recovery.
Clinical recovery
- This theme equated recovery with clinical understanding in terms of symptom remission, insight, absence of relapse and mastery of daily living skills. Definitions within this heading were very focused on clinician based understandings of recovery.
Personal recovery
- This theme constructed recovery as an holistic approach; sensitive to considerations of individuality and ideas of partnership working between professionals and service users.
Service defined recovery
- This final theme presented recovery as a concept defined by organisations with administrative, primarily financial goals shaping the delivery of care and being measured through targets such as admission and discharge rates.