Recovery oriented commissioning, that is working beyond the boundaries of conventional mental health systems, involves ensuring that people with mental health problems have a wide range of options for meeting their needs and aspirations, and that these are consistent with enjoying full citizenship and a life beyond services.

This strategy sets out the principles of recovery and how [DPT] plan to further embed these principles in our work. It describes how we will ensure that all of our services effectively support the wellbeing and recovery of the people we serve, and promote recovery in all of our work with partners and communities.

The group worked together on what could improve people’s experience of diagnosis. This is a summary of their ‘top tips’, which we ask those using diagnosis to consider in developing their therapeutic practice.
This is the folded A4 version. Please click here for the single A5 pages version.

'African, African-Caribbean and South Asian women’s narratives of recovering from mental distress'
Many participants felt that mental health services and recovery frameworks did not account for their experiences of racism and other discrimination, essentially failing to address a significant part of their distress.

"We are a conspiracy of hope and we are pressing back against the strong tide of oppression which for centuries has been the legacy of those of us who are labeled with mental illness. We are refusing to reduce human beings to illnesses."

A collection of stories of personal recovery.
'Recovery story telling is not easy. These stories are a tribute to the courage and resilience of their authors. People have shared with us their reflections, as they move towards self knowledge and wellbeing.'
Hard copies also available. See more information here.

Top ten: papers, policies, books, measures, stories, websites, films and tools
Revised version, 20 November 2011, as chosen by Glenn Roberts and Elina Baker,

Carers Included: A Guide to Best Practice in Acute Mental Health Care
The essence of this document is to clearly identify the six key elements required to achieve better collaboration and partnership with carers in the journey of the person using services and their carer(s), through a typical acute episode.
It also contains many links to other resources for carers.

Connect, Learn, be Active, Notice, Give - CLANG!
For more information visit: www.neweconomics.org/projects/five-ways-well-being

Many people find it helpful to draw up a plan for how they can look after themselves while supporting someone they love and care about. The purpose of this booklet is to help you to do this.
Implementing Recovery – Organisational Change (ImROC) Programme

'Putting recovery at the heart of who we are' - a leaflet for people who use mental health services.
'The word recovery is often used in mental health services. We believe it is at the heart of all we do; we don’t just mean getting better. Personal recovery is about overcoming problems and learning how to live and live well with whatever difficulties remain.'

'The authors discuss the various meanings of recovery as applied to mental illness and list the top ten concerns encountered in efforts to articulate and implement recovery-oriented care.'
Psychiatric Services - ps.psychiatryonline.org - May 2006, Vol. 57, No. 5

http://www.activetravel.org.uk provides active travel solutions. These have a wide range of health benefits.

Part II of a two-part presentation at the National Conference on Spirituality and Mental Health Melbourne, 29 &30 March 2004. See also Part I: Making Space: Spirituality And Mental Health (2001).

'This paper will describe the process of making sense of psychotic experiences and promoting recovery for people who are receiving psychiatric treatment. It will focus on some of the concepts, therapeutic strategies and actions that are likely to help the recovery process.' See Rufus May's website at http://rufusmay.com/

Report of the University of Waikato Mental Health Narratives Project.

The Mary Hemingway Rees Memorial Lecture, World Assembly for Mental Health, Vancouver, July 2001
See also Part II, Standing Still: Spirituality And Sense (2004).

Workforce development and the contribution of ‘lived experience’
'This paper will describe some of our experience of engaging with workforce development and training in a large NHS Trust, which is seeking to interweave a recovery emphasis into other required training processes, but with acknowledgement that the tension of competing priorities remains.' The Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice (2011) v6, n1, 17-28

Developing Recovery Oriented Practice -A guide to writing reports and letters
(Recovery and Independent Living PEG Advisory Paper 9)

"One view is that you cannot recover while others are in control. We disagree and believe that it is possible to work in a recovery-oriented way in all service settings. This series of articles represents a collaborative dialogue between providers and consumers of compulsory psychiatric services and expert commentators".
Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2008), vol. 14, 172–180

A Strategy for Practice and Implementation Plan.
South West London and St George’s Mental Health Trust

New paradigm, new questions, new answers. An event for World Health Day 2001
A transcript of four short talks by leaders in the Recovery movement. The original video is available here.

"We respond with humanity and kindness to each person’s pain, distress, anxiety or need. We search for the things we can do, however small, to give comfort and relieve suffering. We find time for those we serve and work alongside. We do not wait to be asked, because we care."

"We called this report ‘Completing the Revolution’ because there is unfinished business dating from the closing of the asylums that began in the early 1960s..... We make policy recommendations across primary and secondary care and focus on children, young people, older people, military veterans and those from BME communities. All are framed from the perspective of needing to complete this revolution for the most vulnerable in society."

'Mental health is a public health issue. Mental illness is the largest single source of burden of disease in the UK. No other health condition matches mental illness in the combined extent of prevalence, persistence and breadth of impact. Mental illness is consistently associated with deprivation, low income, unemployment, poor education, poorer physical health and increased health-risk behaviour.' (RCPsych Position Statement PS4/2010)

No health without mental health - The new strategy for mental health in England.
This Briefing summarises the strategy’s six objectives and describes how progress will be measured. It also outlines further work to support implementation, which will be taken forward over the next year and beyond.

The Government's new strategy for mental health. Click here for further information.

Allen Frances, lead editor of the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally known as the DSM-IV), says, "There is no definition of a mental disorder. It's bullshit. I mean, you just can't define it. These concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the boundaries." This article on the creation of the next version of the manual, DSM-5, was published in the Wired online magazine. See the original article here.

Details relating to the application for Devon to join the National Recovery Development Programme: Implementing Recovery – Organisational Change (ImROC)

"When someone has spent an awful long time being misunderstood in the mental health system, peer support is like a breath of fresh air and can be lifesaving."

'A personal reminiscence of psychiatry from 1940 to 2010'
Focuses on the competition between leading models, from analysis to neurosciences, the split between mindless and brainless approaches and how influential was the aftermath of war and the politics and sociology of trans-institutionalisation.

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 19th March 2013 at Barnstaple - with Langdon Discovery Centre

New Year - New Leadership

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 22nd January 2013 - Exeter - with Marion Janner (Star Wards)

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 29th November 2012 - Exeter - with Becky Pilkington (Workways) and June Sadd (Peer Support Research Project)

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 26th September 2012 - Totnes - with Sarah Robens (Devon Partnership Trust) on Recovery Care Planning

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 23rd July 2012 - Exeter - with Patte Randal (New Zealand), Julie Repper (ImROC), and Emma Watson (Nottingham-based peer support worker)

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 22nd May 2012 - Tiverton - with Jo Welsman, Stephanie Jibson and Alan Denbigh (Lived Experience Group at Exeter University Mood Disorders Centre)

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 13th March 2012 - Exeter - with James Wooldridge (Devon Partnership Trust “Living with Psychosis” group)

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting 25 January 2012 - Barnstaple - with Emily Lezzeri (The Reader Organisation) and David Baker (Art on Prescription)

Notes from Recovery Devon Meeting, 15th November 2011 - Exeter - with Darren Bleek and Cath Valentine (South West Devon Community Learning Disabilities Team) on Talking Mats

'We now need to make sure everyone is offered the treatments we know work best, delivered with kndness and competance. if we can achieve this, then together we can make the next decade one of increasing recovery for people diagnosed as having schizophrenia or psychosis', Professor Sir Robin Murray. Download the Executive Summary here.

"In order to inform good practice guidance, we sought the views and experiences of people taking medication, carers and mental health workers on the relationship between medication and Recovery.....
Conclusions: A change in practice is needed to be consistent with Recovery values."
First published by Recovery Devon, 10 November 2011

International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 24 No. 2, 2011, (pp. 164 - 177)
"Findings – The main areas in which service users and carers found involvement difficult were: overcoming professional language barriers; emotional impact; and power imbalances between themselves and professionals."

This review aimed to identify instruments designed to measure recovery and evaluate their potential for routine use in Australian public sector mental health services. It concerned itself with: (i) instruments that could be useful to individual consumers and (ii) instruments designed to measure the recovery orientation of services.
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2011; Early Online, 1–14

Evaluation of the Intentional Peer Support course run in Devon by Shery Mead in 2007.
First published in the Journal of Public Mental Health, Volume 9, Issue 1, 2010

This is the third in the Rethink series of recovery publications and draws further ‘insights’ from their qualitative review of peoples stories of personal recovery and identified key themes and principles at work. In addition it gives valuable insights from the ‘user-researchers’ concerning what it meant for them to participate in this work. Essential reading for anyone developing involvement and participation initiatives.

The authors argue for a complementary relationship between recovery and evidence-based practices. This relationship is neither simple nor straightforward, but results in a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts through which each element benefits from the influence of the other.
Community Mental Health Journal, 45, 323–32. (Shared by kind permission of the author)