Psychological Recovery
Beyond Mental Illness

This book addresses an international challenge in relation to recovery: how to bring empirical investigation to the consumer-developed understanding of recovery. The authors rise to this challenge superbly. They rightly position recovery as arising from the lived experience of people who use mental health services, and then develop an empirically-based understanding of the stages and processes of recovery. This empirical work has been internationally influential and the detailed description will be of wide interest. The authors then contextualise their work within the field of positive psychology and well-being research –areas which will directly inform the evolution of mental health services in the 21>st Century. I recommend this book, and hope it is widely read.
—Mike Slade, Researcher (researchintorecovery.com) and Author of ‘Personal Recovery and Mental Illness’

This book begins by examining the history of schizophrenia, and discerning the roots of pessimism in its outlook. The authors then introduce the concept of recovery, and their own model of its process, which is via a series of stages, which they show can be measured and used in treatment. One great value of a work such as this is that it injects factors that are often lacking in treatment environments, and sometimes in the minds of service providers, namely hope and optimism. As such, this book will be, or should be, of interest to all those who work with people with serious mental illnesses.
—Tom Trauer, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia

Retta Andresen (Author), Lindsay G. Oades (Author), Peter Caputi (Author)

9780470711439, Wiley

Hardback, published 12 August 2011

216 pages
24.6 x 17.6 x 1.7 cm, 0.539 kg

"This is an exciting and important book that is sure to stimulate dialogue and debate within the rapidly growing international recovery movement." (TMCnet.com, 5 December 2011)

This book offers a succinct model of recovery from serious mental illness, synthesizing stories of lived experience to provide a framework for clinical work and research in the field of recovery.
• Places the process of recovery within the context of normal human growth and development
• Compares and contrasts concepts of recovery from mental illness with the literature on grief, loss and trauma
• Situates recovery within the growing field of positive psychology – focusing on the active, hopeful process
• Describes a consumer-oriented, stage-based model of psychological recovery which is unique in its focus on intrapersonal processes

About the authors xi
Foreword by Jon Strang xiii
Preface xvii
Acknowledgements xix

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM]