Questioning the professionalization of recovery: a collaborative exploration of a recovery process. Issue 5 (28th May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: De Ruysscher, Clara; Tomlinson, Peter; Vanheule, Stijn; Vandevelde, Stijn
• Is Part Of: Disability & society. Volume 34:Issue 5(2019)
• Page Start: 797
• Page End: 818
• Publication Date: 2019-05-28
• Subjects: Recovery -- mental health -- collaborative research -- bricolage -- co-creation; People with disabilities -- Periodicals; People with disabilities -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; Special education -- Periodicals; Rehabilitation -- Periodicals; 362.4
• DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2019.1588708
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0968-7599

Abstract

Abstract: While the recovery concept strongly resonates in clinical mental health care today, it first arose in service user-led contexts. A major risk of this professionalization shift is that recovery primarily becomes defined by treatment providers. This study aims to keep the debate on recovery alive through a collaborative exploration of Pete's recovery process by means of a bricolage approach. This resulted in an idiographic portrait of Pete's experiences of recovery and treatment, clustered around four themes: life rebuilding, identity, continuity of care and the role of drugs. His experiences illustrate a number of contradictions in the operationalization of the recovery ethos in today's mental health care; whilst recovery appears as a hopeful vision of empowerment, it also risks being reduced to a tokenistic model that fails to address the social realities of people in recovery and in which the assumption that mental illness is chronic is still latently present.