Key practice themes in recovery include

● Recovery is about values related to living applied to the pursuit of health and wellness.

● Recovery involves a shift of emphasis from pathology, illness and symptoms to health, strengths and wellness.

● Hope is of central significance. If recovery is about one thing it is about the recovery of hope.

● Recovery involves empowerment to regain active control over one’s life. This includes accessing useful information, developing confidence in negotiating choices and taking increasing personal responsibility through self-management and self-directed care.

● Finding meaning in and valuing personal experience can be important, as is personal faith based on religion or secular beliefs.

● Recognising and respecting expertise in both parties of a helping relationship, which portrays professional helpers as mentors, coaches, supporters, advocates and ambassadors.

● Recovery approaches give positive value to cultural, religious, sexual and other forms of diversity as sources of identity and belonging.

● Recovery is supported by resolving personal, social or relationship problems and both understanding and realistically coming to terms with ongoing illness or disability.

● Recovery is closely associated with social inclusion and being able to take on meaningful and satisfying social roles in society and gaining access to mainstream services that support ordinary living.

● There is a pivotal need to discover (or rediscover) a positive sense of personal identity, separate from illness and disability.

● The language used and the stories and meanings that are constructed around personal experience, conveyed in letters, reports and conversations, have great significance as mediators of recovery processes.

● Services are an important aspect of recovery but the value and need for services will vary from one person to another.

● Treatment is important but its capacity to support recovery lies in the opportunity to arrive at treatment decisions through negotiation and collaboration, which are valued by the individual as one of many tools they choose to use.

● The development of recovery-based services emphasises the personal qualities of staff as much as their formal qualifications, and seeks to cultivate their capacity for hope, creativity, care and compassion, imagination, acceptance, realism and resilience.

● In order to support personal recovery, services need to move towards working with constructive and creative risk-taking and what is personally meaningful to the individual and their family.