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..In the 1980’s people began to talk about their experience of returning to wellness after mental illness. However, the word recovery was not found in their descriptions. Rather, individuals wrote and spoke of “Maintaining Mental Health in a Turbulent World,” (Houghton, 1982 as cited in Ralph, 2000) and “How I perceive and Manage My Illness,” (Leete, 1989 as cited in Ralph, 2000) and “from patient-hood to person-hood” (Campbell & Schrauberm, 1989 as cited in Ralph 2000). However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the word recovery was “introduced by Patricia Deegan” (1988) in “Recovery: The Lived Experience of Rehabilitation.” Then, soon after (Anthony, 1993), professionals began to carry this message of hope in “Recovery from Mental Illness: The Guiding Vision of the Mental Health Service System in the 1990’s.” (as cited by Ralph, 2000)

Recovery has many definitions. Webster’s New World Dictionary (1970), defines recovery as: a regaining of something lost or stolen, a return to health, consciousness, etc., a regaining of balance, control, composure, etc. At Recovery Innovations (2003), the definition of recovery is’ “Remembering who you are and using all your strengths to be who you were meant to be.” In the mid 1800’s during the era of Moral Treatment, the expectation was that people would recover from bouts of mental illness. Although “treatments” were crude and often terrible this began to change with the advent of Moral Treatment. Moral Treatment came as the result of some doctors and religious organizations feeling appalled at the way people were locked up and “treated” when they were mentally ill.

RECOVERY IS REAL CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

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