Far from being a complete phenomenon in human experience, "mental illness" may be a name we have given to just a part of a cycle of change through which an individual might pass during their life.

We may have become obsessed with the need to reduce the pain without realising that much of the pain may be caused both by ignorance of the broader cycle of change and by the mental health system's pessimistic and rejectionist attitudes to that part of this cycle on which it has decided to concentrate.

Nothing is more confidence-sapping than finding that others take just as bleak a view of the difficulties we are in as we do ourselves. However, it can be difficult to see a period of mental illness as part of a "good thing" when someone is so obviously struggling. One reason for this may be that the prevailing atmosphere in the mental health system intensifies or prolongs the distressing part of the cycle.

There is an alternative. The recovery approach to mental illness may deepen the experience of a service user. In a typical cycle, normal social functioning changes to increasing distress, a period of mental illness, decreasing stress and normal functioning once again.

Because the distressing part of the cycle is viewed so negatively, the possibility may be overlooked that the cycle as a whole may be beneficial.

The reality is that most people recover from periods of mental illness. Traditionally, the continual focus of mental health services on what's wrong with a person may have reinforced the condemnatory view service users often already have of their condition.

Few people have dared ask: what's good about this situation overall? The reason so few have asked this might be because the benefits to the individual fully accrue only when the situation is experienced alongside the lengthy process that includes recovery and acceptance.

When "reactive" distress is pitched in certain circumstances, such as after bereavement, we call it grieving and think of it as normal, acceptable, growth-promoting and necessary. When the roots of the distress are invisible, impenetrable or chaotic we call it a mental illness and think it should stop.

In the recovery approach, a capable practitioner can show that they are alert to the valuable part a period of distress may play in a cycle of wider changes in a service user's life.

There is a challenge for practitioners and for service users in this approach. Service users will have the chance to move through the mire which often seems engulfing and practitioners will be able to share in a broader vision not only of the service user's strengths and purposes but also of a transformed mental health system.

Chris Whitehouse is a freelance trainer and service user.