Lessons from the Recovery Training Program for Service Users Empowerment

Abstract

<b> </b><b> </b>In the recent years there has been growing interest in the process of recovery, not in the sense of clinical remission but rather in terms of being able to lead a meaningful and satisfying life, despite illness symptoms and psychosocial difficulties. The personal recovery is driven by people’s lived, subjective experiences of psychotic crisis and challenges the diagnosis of permanent, chronic, disabling mental illness. One of the activities, which might foster recovery, is lifelong learning paradigm. This paper presents the results of twelve hours training focused on the following topics: recovery – individual experiences, barriers in the process of recovery, social and internalized stigma, empowerment, personal strengths, problem solving, personal recovery plan, and life narrative story. The participants found it to be a positive experience: helpful and supportive. They agreed that talking of their strengths was much useful and made them feel good. In their opinions’ the most important exercise was personal recovery plan which has given them the opportunity to establish individual, meaningful life goals, provide them with hope and self-determination. These results need replication and further work to identify what were the preconditions for making the training such a valuable experience and how this could be replicated on a wider basis.