Centre for Mental Health

Sainsbury Centre guide shows how to put recovery at the centre of mental health services

27 April 2010

Mental health service providers and commissioners can today find out how to make recovery the defining feature of the services they offer to people with severe or enduring mental health problems.

Implementing Recovery: A methodology for organisational change helps mental health services to measure how well placed they are to support the people who use them to build the lives they want.

It sets out the three stages a service needs to reach on ten key challenges to become fully focused on recovery. It allows mental health services, their users and their commissioners to judge how well they are doing in meeting each of the ten challenges.

The ten challenges include making radical changes to the day-to-day experience of using mental health services; training and recruiting more users to work in services; and developing more opportunities for a life 'beyond illness'. As services reach higher stages for each of these challenges they will be better able to support people to make their own choices in life, pursue their ambitions and fulfil their potential.

Professor Geoff Shepherd, co-author of Implementing Recovery, said: "Recovery is a term used by people with mental health problems to describe their struggles to live meaningful and satisfying lives. The principles of recovery provide a conceptual framework for mental health services in several different countries, including now in England. Few mental health services in the UK can describe themselves as being fully oriented towards recovery, yet many are now making progress in this direction and most want to do more."

Co-author Dr Jed Boardman said: "Implementing Recovery helps mental health services through the many stages that they will need to go through to achieve the transformation that is necessary to become genuinely focused on recovery. It provides a practical resource that we hope will stimulate creativity, encourage innovation and guide progress."