Recovery at 30: Perspectives from Psychiatry Clinicians and Senior Faculty

According to William Anthony’s “Recovery from mental illness: the guiding vision of the mental health service system in the 1990s,” mental health recovery means “changing one’s attitudes, values, feelings, goals, and skills in order to live a satisfying life within the limitations caused by illness.” This seminal work served as an overarching goal, a call to action, and a roadmap for the enhancement of psychiatric recovery. Unfortunately, from many viewpoints, the goals encouraged by Anthony have not been achieved. Through semi-structured interviews with psychiatry clinicians and senior faculty members, this article aims to elucidate the current status of psychiatric recovery, how the movement progressed to this point, and where we could go from here. The development of the recovery movement will be discussed, along with its assumptions and explicit goals. The interviews focus on the extent to which these goals have been achieved, barriers to progress, whether goals should be revised, and how to achieve these goals.