For most of us, the term 'recovery' in mental health implies hope and normality for those suffering from emotional distress. It is understandable why recovery has therefore become a significant goal for mental health services. But what does recovery mean for those who are struggling to see it through? Is the emphasis on recovery always a positive thing. This book takes a critical sociological look at personal and public assumptions and understandings. In particular: - It explores what the recovery movement signifies today, offering readers a critical, reflexive view of its scientific, policy and political consequences - It considers what recovery means from social, medical and patient perspectives, and the implications of these conflicting views - It reveals some of the risks and benefits for people with mental health problems encountering a system that expects them to recover Offering a comprehensive and thought-provoking overview of the concept of recovery from mental illness, this book is a must-have for students studying mental health across a range of subjects, including sociology, social work, psychology and nursing.

Winner of Medical Journalists’ Association Specialist Readership Award 2010 Recovery is widely endorsed as a guiding principle of mental health policy. Recovery brings 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. These developments are 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 is more than a bottom up movement turned into top down mental health policy in English-speaking countries. Recovery integrates concepts that have evolved internationally over a long time. It brings together major stakeholders and different professional groups in mental health, who share the aspiration to overcome current conceptual reductionism and prognostic negativism in psychiatry. Recovery is the consequence of the achievements of the user movement. Most conceptual considerations and decisions have evolved from collaborations between people with and without a lived experience of mental health problems and the psychiatric service system. Many of the most influential publications have been written by users and ex-users of services and work-groups that have brought together individuals with and without personal experiences as psychiatric patients. In a fresh and comprehensive look, this book covers definitions, concepts and developments as well as consequences for scientific and clinical responsibilities. Information on relevant history, state of the art and transformational efforts in mental health care is complemented by exemplary stories of people who created through their lives and work an evidence base and direction for Recovery. This book was originally published in German. The translation has been fully revised, references have been amended to include the English-language literature and new material has been added to reflect recent developments. It features a Foreword by Helen Glover who relates how there is more to recovery than the absence or presence of symptoms and how health care professionals should embrace the growing evidence that people can reclaim their lives and often thrive beyond the experience of a mental illness. Comments on German edition: "It is fully packed with useful information for practitioners, is written in jargon free language and has a good reading pace." Theodor Itten, St. Gallen, Switzerland and Hamburg, Germany "This book is amazingly positive. It not only talks about hope, it creates hope. Its therapeutic effects reach professional mental health workers, service users, and carers alike. Fleet-footed and easily understandable, at times it reads like a suspense novel." Andreas Knuf, pro mente sana, Switzerland '"This is the future of psychiatry"' cheered a usually service-oriented manager after reading the book. We might not live to see it.' Ilse Eichenbrenner, Soziale Psychiatrie, Germany

Mental health has long been perceived as a taboo subject in the UK, so much so that mental health services have been marginalised within health and social care. There is even more serious neglect of the specific issues faced by different ethnic minorities. This book uses the rich narratives of the recovery journeys of Chinese mental health service users in the UK – a perceived ‘hard-to-reach group’ and largely invisible in mental health literature – to illustrate the myriad ways that social inequalities such as class, ethnicity and gender contribute to service users' distress and mental ill-health, as well as shape their subsequent recovery journeys. Recovery, Mental Health and Inequality contributes to the debate about the implementation of ‘recovery approach’ in mental health services and demonstrates the importance of tackling structural inequalities in facilitating meaningful recovery. This timely book would benefit practitioners and students in various fields, such as nurses, social workers and mental health postgraduate trainees.

DescriptionA Definitive Guide to Mental Health Recovery by Jeremy Gluck is a unique, experiential guide to recovering mental health. Based on trainings to mental health services staff, supplemented by thoughtful and very original reflections and explorations of this momentous new development in attitudes to the successful transformation of mental health, and including new and unusual articles and interviews with mental health professionals and service user mavericks, this book is indispensable to a more profound and penetrating understanding of what it is like to recover, what it means to recover and why recovery is necessary and indeed the right of services users.About the AuthorJeremy Gluck is an expatriate Canadian who, with a parallel, successful life in the arts, is now working in the voluntary mental health sector in Wales as a mental health information and research worker. His lifelong experience as a published writer and author has equipped him ideally to write this companion volume to his memoir "Victim of Dreams."

Many music therapists work in adult mental health settings after qualifying. For many, it will be a challenging and even daunting prospect. Yet until now, there has been no psychiatric music therapy text providing advice on illness management and recovery. This essential book fills the gap in the literature, providing the necessary breadth and depth to inform readers of the psychotherapeutic research base and show how music therapy can effectively and efficiently function within a clinical scenario. The book takes an illness management and recovery approach to music therapy specific to contemporary group-based practice. It is also valuable for administrators of music therapy, providing innovative theory-based approaches to psychiatric music therapy, developing and describing new ways to conceptualize psychiatric music therapy treatment, educating music therapists, stimulating research and employment, and influencing legislative policies. An important aim of the book is to stimulate both critical thought and lifelong learning concerning issues, ideas, and concepts related to mental illness and music therapy. Critical thinking and lifelong learning have been - and will likely continue to be - essential aspirations in higher education. Moreover, contemporary views concerning evidence-based practice rely heavily upon the clinician's ability to think critically, seek a breadth of contradicting and confirmatory evidence, implement meta-cognition to monitor thoughts throughout processes, and synthesize and evaluate knowledge to make informed clinical decisions relevant and applicable to idiosyncratic contextual parameters. For both students and clinicians in music therapy, this is an indispensable text to help them learn, develop, and hone their skills in music therapy

This textbook outlines the key areas of mental health practice for those in the early stages of their training, who may not necessarily come from psychology backgrounds. Accompanies the lecturer’s book ‘Teaching Mental Health’ Focuses on the 'Ten Essential Shared Capabilities' that have been developed by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health In partnership with the BABCP, Lord Layard is recommending that more mental health graduates be trained in order to meet demand for mental health services in the UK

This book offers a thorough and accessible look into the importance of recovery in both staying healthy and performing well, and highlights the detrimental effects of underrecovery on physical and mental health. Internationally renowned experts from psychology, physiology, sport medicine, health, and sport science offer interdisciplinary analysis of the effects of underrecovery as well as the use of applied intervention and prevention strategies. Over the last few decades, research in sports has provided numerous studies showing the importance of addressing recovery to find recovery-stress balance and build resources that help prevent illness and promote healthy living and well-being. Each chapter of this volume discusses a specific area of recovery, providing a collection of useful and practical lessons athletes and non-athletes can take forward in their training and beyond. Focusing on both research and applied counseling techniques to discuss recovery as an underestimated factor in physical and mental health, the book aims to enlighten readers on ways to incorporate recovery into their everyday lives to reduce stress and prevent injury. The book is written for the scientific community, applied health scientists, students, and interested readers. It draws on experiences and scientific findings from the field of sport to make them usable for an expanded understanding of recovery in the field of health and related areas such as the workplace.

"This purpose of this text is to describe the who, what, when, where, why, and how of music therapy for illness management and recovery for adults with mental health conditions specific to clinical group-based practice within the United States. Other goals of this monograph include informing administrators of music therapy, providing theory-based approaches to music therapy in mental health settings, educating music therapists about related literature outside the profession, stimulating research and employment, increasing access to services, and influencing legislative policies. Perhaps the most essential purpose of this text is to encourage both critical thinking and lifelong learning about issues, ideas, and concepts related to various intersections between mental health and music therapy."--Publisher.

This book takes the lofty vision of "recovery" and of a "life in the community" for every adult with a mental illness promised by the U.S. President's New Freedom Commission and shows the reader what is entailed in making this vision a practical reality for people with mental illnesses and their families.

Focuses on a shift away from traditional clinical preoccupations towards new priorities of supporting the patient.