078 Making sense of recovery

Having explored the concept of recovery in the previous episode I concluded that I fully support the original service users' intentions but despair at the corporate take-over of manifestly good ideas in order to decorate their own complex and confused way of going about things. As a realist I have to accept that recovery has become a leading mantra headlining the development of 21st century mental health services, but I struggle with the degree of confusion expressed by so many practitioners who would rather not be asked to describe what it actually means. What does the Strengths Approach lend to this set of circumstances? In this episode I compare the language of the principles of recovery with the practical 'doing it' approach offered by the strengths movement. We can sit around and talk about conceptualisations as long as we like, but at some point someone has to do something, and that is where the strengths approach comes into its own.