Green Gauge Consultancy ‘investing in hope’

Recovery Based Practice

History: In the 1980’s Pat Deegan signalled an awareness of the personal journeys that many people, around the world, had taken to discover a sense of themselves, within their own communities, despite having had a diagnosis relating to ‘mental illness’.

Clay gave expression to this personal journey, in 1994:
“I really do not want to be called recovered. From the experiences of madness I received a wound that changed my life. It enabled me to help others and to know myself. I am proud that I have struggled with God and with the mental health system. I have not recovered. I have overcome.”

The acknowledged struggles of early pioneers, such as Pat Deegan, Mary Ellen Copeland, Professor Laurie Curtis, and many others, demonstrated a consistency in their approach, and the value base, that underpinned their very different journeys. This work led to the emergence of the ‘Recovery Approach’ – an approach, or value base, that has begun to increasingly infect mental health services around the world. This approach has been most succinctly captured in the Ohio Mental Health Department Definition:

“Recovery is a personal process of overcoming the negative impact of a psychiatric disability despite its continued presence.”

Recovery Based Practice: The Recovery Approach is not a model for service delivery but it does provides a value base against which services can be evaluated in terms of:

            The hope it creates for people experiencing mental distress
The acceptance of personal responsibility for ones own mental health
            A active sense of ones own abilities and constraints
An awareness of the learning and discovery associated with self management and engaging in a personal journey
A recognition of the importance of connectedness with people we love and/or trust in our own communities

Increasingly we have become interested in practice that supports people, in these five areas, and we have been developing reflective and engagement tools, that help us to work with the increasing number of people, organisations and communities, who want to engage with their own recovery journey.