Many countries have introduced policies that stipulate mental health services be 'recovery-oriented'. However, there is no widespread accepted definition of recovery, an understanding of the process, and how services are to become recovery-oriented, or consensus on how recovery should be assessed. Where conceptual models have been proposed, they tend to be complex and do not lend themselves readily to routine use and research purposes.

This book presents a consumer-orientated, stage-based model of psychological recovery from serious mental illness, synthesizing stories of lived experience to provide a framework for clinical work and research in the field of recovery. Each stage of the recovery process is illustrated with patient experiences, which are then placed in the context of existing theory in fields such as trauma, hope, self-determination, identity, and wellbeing. Three measures of recovery are also presented, providing recovery-based additions to the array of outcome measures commonly used in mental health settings.

Placing recovery within the growing field of positive psychology, this book fills a need in the mental health professional community for a succinct model of recovery from mental illness. It offers a thorough grounding in the history of the concept of recovery, a deep appreciation of the mental health consumer's experience of psychological recovery, an understanding of the conceptual model, and an awareness of the issues surrounding recovery measurement.