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Discovering Recovery

Medical professionals are talking more and more about service users recovering from mental illness – but what does recovery mean? It is not just a question of alleviation from the nightmare symptoms of psychosis or overcoming the trauma of treatment within a psychiatric ward, especially as, for most service users mental illness is a permanent disability. Recovery is a concept like the concepts of “well-being”, “happiness” or “contentment” – it means different things to different people. Recovery is a concept that means salvaging your life from the trauma of illness and treatment and restoring your existence into something meaningful, enjoyable and fulfilling – and what is meaningful, enjoyable and fulfilling is different for everyone.

A few people who have experienced mental illness are able to reclaim their lives within the mainstream of society with little or no support from mental health services and medication. They are able to engage in full time work, enter meaningful relationships and take on full social responsibility. On the opposite side of the coin there are a few who live happily with their mental illness without ever coming to the attention of mental health services especially if they are not a danger to themselves or to others – so in this case have these people recovered for themselves by coming to terms with the limitations the disability imposes upon them?

Recovery is a concept that may be within every service users’ grasp – as it is relative as to what a service user can achieve. For some recovery means achieving no more than being able to manage their lives in terms of self care, household tasks and finances – they look for nothing beyond that. For others recovery means being able to use the mental health drop in facilities without experiencing symptoms of psychosis. Some other service users go on to achieve more – achievement like recovery is relative – but recovery can also mean being able to contribute to society and to achieve socially e.g. work, education and relationships.

There are those who never seem to move on into recovery – they feel that they have been martyred to mental illness and that the wounds both from the illness and the treatment will never heal. Some service users feel mesmerized by the whole experience of their mental illness which has made them feel that they are special and apart from the rest of humanity – they never wish to go beyond the role of being a service user - a role which they cling on to for security - and therefore they never make it into some sort of recovery role.

For most of us service users we feel that we enjoy recovery as a temporary state before relapse because mental illness is a permanent disability – it is not like recovering from a toothache or sprained muscle. It can be many years before relapse during which time we try to construct a meaningful, enjoyable and fulfilling life but most of us feel we are always walking a tight rope of borrowed time before there is another disastrous onset of mental illness and – worse still – a period of destructive incarceration within a psychiatric ward where service users are treated like criminals. Whilst recovery is enjoyable it is always at the back of our minds that it is a temporary state of respite and borrowed time before relapse. We all have to make the most of the good times.

Many health professionals and the Government are interested in measuring, quantifying and drawing definitions of recovery amongst mental health service users in order to establish definable recovery models. Whilst this might be for philanthropic purposes in order to promote higher recovery standards, a Government obsessed with cutting expenditure on welfare benefits for the disabled could use such findings into recovery to review and redefine disabled service users’ entitlement to incapacity benefit and disability living allowance. With recovery measurements in place the Government could coerce more and more service users who are classified as recovered into seeking paid employment by stopping their entitlement to welfare benefit. We must also recall the Government’s current obsession with social inclusion of mental health service users and their drive to place the service user in the work place. Presumably the money that Government saved on the welfare of mental health service users would be reallocated to sink without trace in their currently over extended foreign policy.