Recovery--reshaping our clinical and scientific responsibilities

Advocacy for Recovery has been joined by research offering new perspectives on mental health policy, treatment, rehabilitation and anti-discrimination efforts.

Chances and challenges of a Recovery model for the mental health field will be presented and discussed.

Recovery is currently widely endorsed as a guiding principle of mental health policy. New rules for services, e.g. user involvement and person-centred care, as well as new tools for clinical collaborations, e.g. shared decision making and psychiatric advance directives, are being complemented by new proposals regarding more ethically consistent anti-discrimination and involuntary treatment legislation as well as participatory approaches to evidence-based medicine and policy. Recovery advocacy has been joined by research on recovery and resilience resulting in new data on the long-term perspectives of people experiencing common as well as severe mental health problems. Definitions of remission and recovery as well as the concept of chronicity are under debate. Research questions regarding recovery as a process as well as an outcome warrant scientific efforts enabling the integration of different perspectives as well as different methodologies.

Consequences and challenges of the Recovery model need to be tackled from different perspectives by clinicians, researchers, policy makers and - essentially - users and carers and their representatives in order to be fully explored and brought to life.