Confusion of recovery: one solution

Collier, E

Abstract

This paper questions the current mental health discourse that offers new definitions of the concept of ‘recovery’ and offers a different perspective that aims to clarify its meaning. Confusion is caused when medical language continues to be used in discussions that aim to challenge traditional medical understanding of the term ‘recovery’ (meaning cure). Medical and non-medical concepts of
recovery are referred to interchangeably in many narratives and the common references to and acceptance of the Harding et al. papers and similar that report on how people can ‘get better’ from schizophrenia perpetuates this confusion. In this paper, it is suggested that ‘recovery’ should not be
viewed as having new meaning, but that two different concepts have been confused, with the same word having been used to describe two completely different things altogether. This means that what is referred to in this paper as ‘medical’ recovery (traditional definitions of recovery that aims for cure), becomes subordinate to ‘life’ recovery (personal development and change) in which psychiatric classification might have no part in a person’s understanding of their experience and where improving
‘symptoms’ could be irrelevant in the personal process of growth and discovery.

Citation

Collier, E. Confusion of recovery: one solution. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 19(1), 16-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1447-0349.2009.00637.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Deposit Date: Apr 28, 2011
• Journal: International Journal Of Mental Health Nursing
• Print ISSN: 1445-8330
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 19
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 16-21
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1447-0349.2009.00637.x
• Keywords: mental health, mental illness, recovery
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1447-0349.2009.00637.x