Recovery: A Personal Journey

In 1988, Patricia Deegan, herself a recovering consumer and mental health worker, wrote that:

'Disabled persons are not passive recipients of rehabilitation services. Rather, they experience themselves as recovering a new sense of self and of purpose within and beyond the limits of the disability. This distinction between rehabilitation and recovery is important.

....Rehabilitation refers to the services and technologies that are made available to disabled persons so that they might learn to adapt to their world. Recovery refers to the lived or real life experiences of persons as they accept and overcome the challenge of the disability.

....The recovery process is the foundation upon which rehabilitation services build.

.... disabled people must be active and courageous participants in their own rehabilitation project or that project will fail. It is through the process of recovery that disabled persons become active and courageous participants in their own rehabilitation project.'
(Deegan, Patricia, Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal, Vol 11, No. 4, April 1988)

Deegan described three stages in the experience of recovery, those of denial, despair and anguish, and hope. She lists the three cornerstones of recovery itself as hope, willingness and responsible action. As psychosocial rehabilitation is a process which should facilitate recovery, its principles and the characteristics of any service system attempting to provide psychosocial rehabilitation, should assist recovery, not hinder it.

At the 1993 VICSERV Forum, community-managed service workers collectively agreed that they were responsible for providing an environment steeped in hope. They needed to believe in the dreams and aspirations of their participants. They needed to provide support and caring when all others faltered. They needed to believe that recovery was possible even without 'cure' and that each person's journey of recovery was unique.

It is in the context of community-management, participant involvement and direction, the service characteristics outlined above, psychosocial rehabilitation principles and the belief in recovery, that non-government Community Mental Health Rehabilitation and Support Services provide an environment which is different from that of clinical services. Disability support services and clinical services have different roles to play. Disability support services are freed from the statutory requirements that bind clinical services and this allows innovations, which might otherwise not be possible. Disability support services are not constrained by the requirement to define their participants by their 'psychiatric illness'. This is a critical difference, which impacts on outcomes for consumers who wish to test themselves as community members, or who seek to develop creative aspects of themselves not recognised previously.

Community-managed Community Mental Health Rehabilitation and Support Services may be different and separate from clinical services, but they are complementary, each being necessary components of a comprehensive network of mental health services. This difference, this separation, should not be construed as divisive or negative, but rather as facilitating growth and development of consumers as they move from 'psychiatric patient' to whole person.

You can read more about recovery from this link