This book offers a succinct model of recovery from serious mental illness, synthesizing stories of lived experience to provide a framework for clinical work and research in the field of recovery.

• Places the process of recovery within the context of normal human growth and development

• Compares and contrasts concepts of recovery from mental illness with the literature on grief, loss and trauma

• Situates recovery within the growing field of positive psychology – focusing on the active, hopeful process

• Describes a consumer-oriented, stage-based model of psychological recovery which is unique in its focus on intrapersonal processes