The Top Ten Concerns About Recovery Encountered in Mental Health System Transformation

The notion of "recovery" has recently taken center stage in guiding mental health policy and practice. However, it is not yet clear what the term means and what is to be entailed in transforming the nation's mental health system to promote it. The authors discuss the various meanings of recovery as applied to mental illness and list the top ten concerns encountered in efforts to articulate and implement recovery-oriented care. These concerns include the following: recovery is old news, recovery-oriented care adds to the burden of already stretched providers, recovery involves cure, recovery happens to very few people, recovery represents an irresponsible fad, recovery happens only after and as a result of active treatment, recovery-oriented care is implemented only through the addition of new resources, recovery-oriented care is neither reimbursable nor evidence based, recovery-oriented care devalues the role of professional intervention, and recovery-oriented care increases providers' exposure to risk and liability. These concerns are addressed through discussion of the two over-arching challenges that they pose, namely the issues of resources and risk.