What Does Recovery Mean?

What Does Recovery Mean?

Southdown’s approach to supporting people with mental health challenges is recovery-focussed. Our staff and clients shared what recovery means to them in the video below.

There are many descriptions of recovery in mental health. Some definitions include:

“Recovery does not mean cure. It is a hopeful attutude, a way of approaching the day.” Pat Deegan

“Recovery isn’t about getting back to how you were before, it’s about building something new.” Anon

Words often used in relation to recovery include:

Hope: An essential and motivating message of a better future, a belief, however small, that people can overcome barriers and obstacles that confront them.

Choice: Recovery is a choice, making choices is how we discover who we are, and learn from our own experience.

Control:Recovery is about staying in control of your life despite experiencing a mental health challenge.

Lived experience: A term used to describe people who have lived through their own experience of mental health challenges, and may have used mental health services.

Peer support: A term used to describe the help and support that people with lived experiences of mental health challenges give to one another. Peers can encourage people in their recovery by offering a supportive relationship and providing a sense of belonging.

Co-production: A term used to describe an equal partnership between staff working in services and those who are intended to benefit from using those services. It is a way to bring together different kinds of knowledge and skills to work together to design, develop, plan and deliver services in an equal partnership.

Co-delivered: A service run by clients jointly with professionally trained staff.

Client involvement: A term used to describe a range of ways people can contribute their views and ideas, and how these can be used to make changes to the services they are using.

Recovery plan: This can be a useful written tool for people to plan their recovery, identifying their own strengths and aspirations. The plan identifies goals and what will help to achieve them, and can include action points for the person and people supporting the person. Plans can also identify what keeps people well.