How is evaluated mental health recovery?: A systematic review

There is an increasingly recognition of the concept of personal recovery in the treatment of mental illness. Recovery defined as living a fulfilling, rewarding life, even in the ongoing presence of a mental illness. Consequently, a number of different instruments have been designed to assess recovery-oriented outcomes. The objective of the study was to conduct a systematic revision of the domains and the instruments used to assess personal recovery and mental health services orientation to recovery. After the systematic review, it has been carried out a selection process of the most adequate instruments taking into account different criteria of adequacy, psychometric properties and the validation to the Spanish population. In the results have been obtained 35 instruments for measuring personal recovery and 18 for assessing the orientation of recovery in mental health services. However, many of them have been dismissed for not reaching the adequacy criteria. This review makes clear the lack of consensus on the concept of recovery, as a consequence of the high number of instruments that evaluate the same concept through different domains. In addition, few instruments offer data related to the psychometric properties and only one instrument to assess personal recovery is validated to the Spanish population.