Making Sense of Mental Illness as a Full Human Experience: Perspective of Illness and Recovery Held by People With a Mental Illness Living in the Community

Abstract

There is substantial current interest in building evidence about recovery from mental illness in order to inform comprehensive practice in health and social paradigms. This article presents accounts related to recovery and illness expressed by eight people through a Participatory Action Research project. The research facilitated entry to their subjective experiences of living in the community as an artist with a mental illness. Specific concern was raised of recovery as a clinical term with its requirement to meet distinct conventions of recovery formulated by health workers. This article emphasizes that individualized values of mental illness and recovery are interconnected to dynamic and complex perceptions drawn from experiencing life and experiencing things in their life.

Keywords:

• recovery
• mental illness
• art
• evidence-based practice
• participatory action research