Recovery in Mental Health

Winner of Medical Journalists' Association SpecialistReadership Award 2010Recovery is widely endorsed as a guiding principle of mentalhealth policy. Recovery brings new rules for services, e.g. userinvolvement and person-centred care, as well as new tools forclinical collaborations, e.g. shared decision making andpsychiatric advance directives. These developments are complementedby new proposals regarding more ethically consistentanti-discrimination and involuntary treatment legislation, as wellas participatory approaches to evidence-based medicine andpolicy.Recovery is more than a bottom up movement turned into top downmental health policy in English-speaking countries. Recoveryintegrates concepts that have evolved internationally over a longtime. It brings together major stakeholders and differentprofessional groups in mental health, who share the aspiration toovercome current conceptual reductionism and prognostic negativismin psychiatry.Recovery is the consequence of the achievements of the usermovement. Most conceptual considerations and decisions have evolvedfrom collaborations between people with and without a livedexperience of mental health problems and the psychiatric servicesystem. Many of the most influential publications have beenwritten by users and ex-users of services and work-groups that havebrought together individuals with and without personal experiencesas psychiatric patients.In a fresh and comprehensive look, this book covers definitions,concepts and developments as well as consequences for scientificand clinical responsibilities. Information on relevant history,state of the art and transformational efforts in mental health careis complemented by exemplary stories of people who created throughtheir lives and work an evidence base and direction forRecovery.This book was originally published in German. Thetranslation has been fully revised, references have been amended toinclude the English-language literature and new material has beenadded to reflect recent developments. It features a Foreword byHelen Glover who relates how there is more to recovery than theabsence or presence of symptoms and how health care professionalsshould embrace the growing evidence that people can reclaim theirlives and often thrive beyond the experience of a mentalillness.Comments on German edition:"It is fully packed with useful information for practitioners,is written in jargon free language and has a good readingpace."Theodor Itten, St. Gallen, Switzerland and Hamburg, Germany"This book is amazingly positive. It not only talks about hope,it creates hope. Its therapeutic effects reach professional mentalhealth workers, service users, and carers alike. Fleet-footed andeasily understandable, at times it reads like a suspensenovel."Andreas Knuf, pro mente sana, Switzerland'"This is the future of psychiatry"' cheered a usuallyservice-oriented manager after reading the book. We might not liveto see it.'Ilse Eichenbrenner, Soziale Psychiatrie, Germany