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Healing the heart of recovery

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  • Jackie Liggins

Abstract

Background and Aim: Medicine is traditionally considered a healing profession, yet concepts of healing are rarely applied to mental illness, recovery being the dominant discourse. This article reports one aspect of the results of a broader exploration, through a service user lens, of aspects of place that facilitate healing in mental health care, with a resulting conceptualisation of healing. Method: The research material comprised the author’s historical writings of her experience of mental illness and recovery and in-depth individual interviews with 10 mental health service users. Analysed thematically, emerging ideas were further developed through an autoethnographically informed, reflexive and iterative process. Results: Healing is necessary when there has been a disruption of integrity and wholeness, experienced as suffering. Offering opportunities for connection, integration and transformation, and acquiring wisdom along the way, healing is a journey of exploration that takes time and is hard work. Discussion: Healing is conceptualised as the intensely personal experience at the heart of recovery, reminding us of the fundamental personal processes at the heart of our journeys. As a universal human experience, healing potentially removes the sense of othering that is at the heart of mental illness stigma.

Suggested Citation

  • Jackie Liggins, 2018. "Healing the heart of recovery," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 64(7), pages 660-667, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:64:y:2018:i:7:p:660-667
    DOI: 10.1177/0020764018796538
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