Recovery is Possible | Christine Young

Recovery Is Possible: Inducing Hope Through Recovery-Based Models of Mental Health

Adapted from “Recovery is Possible: life on the other side of a psychiatric diagnosis,” a speech by Christine Young.

According to the National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH), there were an estimated 9.6 million
adults aged 18 or older in the U.S. with a “serious mental illness” (SMI) diagnosis in 2012. This represented 4.1 percent of all U.S. adults. About 1 in 5 Americans can expect to suffer from some type of mental health challenge during their lifetime.

With the prevalence of Mental Health diagnosis being 1 in 5, the odds are that either someone you know or perhaps even yourself have been labeled with a diagnosis. But life on the other side of that diagnosis is possible. Recovery is possible.

 As a Peer Educator and Certified Peer Specialist Christine Young has spent the last five years training and educating people on the possibility of recovery after a mental health diagnosis. In her work, the prevalence of mental health diagnoses has made the message that recovery is possible particularly important to convey.

Key to the idea that recovery is possible is that it is a non-linear process of gaining control over one’s life and life direction.

According to Young, “When people receive a mental health diagnosis like depression, bi-polar or anxiety disorder, they are often left to feel like that is it. This is the way that the rest of their lives will be. They often face stigma and self-esteem issues around the belief that they are permanently ill or somehow broken.” 

A recovery orientation rejects that idea and recognizes that there are things people can do to get well and stay well. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines recovery as “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential.”

According to Christine Young, “Hope plays a pivotal role in recovery. A person has to have both the ability and the opportunity to engage in the recovery process. So this includes access to recovery based services.” Recovery-based services include peer support, services based on a person’s strengths instead of deficits, and self-supported tools such as the Wellness Recovery Action Plan, among other activities and interventions.

According to Young, we’re often hindered in our recovery by what the Appalachian Consulting Group has called the “disabling powers” of a psychiatric diagnosis, including one’s self-image, the side-effects of medication, stigma, and sometimes the mental health system itself.

The Appalachian Consulting Group’s Stages Model of recovery gives us one idea of how to approach a person’s relationship with those disabling powers as we move through the “impact of illness,” a period where “life is limited,” a point at which we see that “change is possible,” where we go through a “commitment to change,” and where we make “actions for change” in our lives.

We may engage in these stages in a non-linear way, at times feeling overwhelmed and ill, but perhaps skipping quickly to seeing hope as we realize that change is possible.

None of the ideas about recovery presented here mention that symptoms have to go away, as long as they aren't a barrier to engaging in the process of controlling one’s life and life direction.

By communicating that all are able to enter into the recovery process, people can live lives of hope and opportunity. As stated on the SAMHSA website, “Today when individuals with mental and/or substance use disorders seek help, they are met with the knowledge and belief that anyone can recover.”