Recovery Info Factsheets

Approaches that may help are:

WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Planning)

WRAP is a self-management and recovery system developed in the US by people with mental health difficulties. People are supported to create their own wellness recovery action plan, setting out their goals, what help they need to get there, what helps keep them well, and what puts their mental health at risk. WRAP aims to:

increase the person’s sense of control over their mental health problems
increase personal empowerment
improve quality of life
assist people in achieving their own life goals and dreams.

A WRAP will also state how the person wants others to respond when symptoms have made it impossible for them to continue to make decisions safely for themselves and take care of themselves.

You can find out more about WRAP on the Mental Health Recovery and WRAP website

DREEM (Developing Recovery Enhancing Environments Measure)

DREEM is an outcome measure and research tool to see how ‘recovery-oriented’ a service is. It is a self-report instrument that gathers information about mental health recovery from people who using mental health services. The DREEM asks people where they are in their process of mental health recovery and what markers of recovery they are currently experiencing.

You can find out more about DREEM on the Recovery Devon website.

Recovery Star

This is tool for people using services to enable them to measure their own recovery progress, with the help of mental health workers or others. The ‘star’ contains ten areas covering the main aspects of people’s lives, including living skills, relationships, work and identity and self-esteem. Service users set their personal goals within each area and measure over time how far they are progressing towards these goals. This can help them identify their goals and what support they need to reach them, and ensure they are making progress, however gradual, which itself can encourage hope.
You can find out more about Recovery Star on the Mental Health Providers Forum website.

Information about mental health recovery from different organisations and agencies across the world. Whilst we do not necessarily agree with all of the definitions and descriptions they provide, we believe it is important for site visitors to have access to the full range of views on the issue of recovery. Click on title to go to link.

Recovery Factsheet from the Mental Health Foundation (UK)

“In mental health, ‘recovery’ has a range of meanings and does not always refer to the process of complete recovery from a mental health problem in the way that we may recover from a physical health problem. For many people, the concept of recovery is about staying in control of their life despite experiencing a mental health problem. Professionals in the mental health sector often refer to the ‘recovery model’ to describe this way of thinking.”

Recovery Information from Rethink (UK)

“Recovery can be defined as a personal process of tackling the adverse impact of experiencing mental health problems, despite their continuing or long-term presence. Used in this sense, recovery does not mean “cure”. Recovery is about people seeing themselves as capable of recovery rather than as passive recipients of professional interventions. The personal accounts of recovery suggest that much personal recovery happens without (or in some cases in spite of) professional help.

The journey to recovery: the Government’s vision for mental health care Department of Health (UK)

This booklet provides a short explanation for non-specialists of the policies Government has adopted to improve mental health services for people of working age, what will be achieved for those who use them – and what more still needs to be done. Download copy here

Mental Health Recovery Articles on recovery from the label of mental illness, self-help and rehabilitation information, news and more from National Alliance on Mental Illness of Santa Cruz County (USA):

“We believe recovery is possible. Our site contains articles, news, recovery techniques and links. We advocate for mental health care systems to adopt the recovery model.” Full list of resources here.

National Consensus Statement on Mental Health Recovery Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, (USA)

Over 110 expert panelists participated, including mental health consumers, family members, providers, advocates, researchers, academicians, managed care representatives, accreditation organization representatives, State and local public officials, and others.The following consensus statement was derived from expert panelist deliberations on the findings escort service in london. Mental health recovery is a journey of healing and transformation enabling a person with a mental health problem to live a meaningful life in a community of his or her choice while striving to achieve his or her full potential. Read the full statement and the 10 Fundamental Components of Recovery.