Recovery and Resilience
Week 6
Context
The concept that people can and do recover from severe mental illness has become more accepted in recent years. "Personal recovery" is different to "clinical recovery". Clinical recovery tends to mean "getting back to normal" and being symptom free. Personal recovery means different things to different people and should be defined by the person experiencing mental illness. However, for many people it means a way of living a satisfying and meaningful life within the limits of mental illness. There are different themes and elements which tend to be important for many people working towards recovery. These themes include hope, acceptance, control, basic needs and meaningful activity (Rethink, 2012).
Content
Personalised care
"NICE Quality Standard 14 on people’s experience of adult mental health services, developed with people who use and work in the services, includes the quality statement: 'People using mental health services, and their families or carers, feel optimistic that care will be effective.' To be optimistic about their care and support, people who use services want to see joined-up, preventive approaches that do not abandon them at key stages. They want their mental and physical health needs to be addressed together in a whole person approach. This means mental health provision sits squarely within ‘integrated care’, which is defined as ‘person centred coordinated care’" (National Voices & Think Local Act Personal, 2014). This means in practice that people delivering mental health services should give weight to:
- The need to be free from stigma and discrimination
- The strong desire for and importance of peer support as an effective and equal form of provision to clinical and mainstream services
- The potential positive impacts of involving people with lived experience in the design and commissioning of services, and in their operation
- Support for prevention and self management, to stay well and avoid crises, and
- The responsiveness of staff, services and support organisations to people’s fluctuating needs – particularly so that crisis episodes are anticipated and well managed.
Recovery
Recovery emphasises that, while people may not have full control over their symptoms, they can have full control over their lives. Recovery is not about 'getting rid' of problems. It is about seeing beyond a person’s mental health problems, recognising and fostering their abilities, interests and dreams. Mental illness and social attitudes to mental illness often impose limits on people experiencing ill health. health professionals, friends and families can be overly protective or pessimistic about what someone with a mental health problem will be able to achieve. Recovery is about looking beyond those limits to help people achieve their own goals and aspirations. "... it is commonly agreed that a key component of any recovery orientated practice is the cultivation of hope and therapeutic optimism within services. Hope has consistently been identified as a key component of, or even a prerequisite for, recovery because it is viewed as both a trigger of the recovery process and a maintaining factor" (Spandler & Stickley, 2010).
Resilience
Resilience is the ability to cope with life’s challenges and to adapt to adversity. Your levels of resilience can change over the course of your life. Resilience can be difficult to define, but this short video from Glasgow does that job really well!
Can you see opportunities for resilience in Carol's Journey?
References and Further Reading
National Voices & Think Local Act Personal (2014) No assumptions: A narrative for coordinated care and support in mental health. Download No assumptions: A narrative for coordinated care and support in mental health. National Voices &Think Local Act Personal
Rethink (2012) What is recovery? [WWW] http://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/recovery/what-is-recovery Links to an external site.
Spandler, H. & Stickley, T. (2010) No hope without compassion: the importance of compassion in recovery-focused mental health services. Journal of Mental Health, December 2011; 20(6): 555–566
Some Recovery Resources