How to Define Recovery

Some of the things that help people recover from a mental illness are you have to take responsibility for your mental health and behavior. You have to recognize your symptoms and know what triggers the symptoms. Some people recover with medication and some recover without it. You may not have symptoms if you take medication and it works well for a person. The same medication does not work for all people. That makes it hard, because I had a good friend in the State Hospital and he was doing good for two weeks. Then his medication stopped working and as long as I was there they never found any that worked for him. I do hope he is out and they finally found something that worked. Even though you may have the same diagnoses, what you go through is different. Employment helps a lot in recovery by having confidence and it also helps a person interact with others. Support from family and/or mental health counselor or psychiatrist. It could even be a good friend who knows you and believes in you. Stubbornness, or self determination in the fact that you can succeed even if you have a mental illness, and you will not let anything stop you from realizing recovery, and you would also have to have hope that your dreams and recovery will come to realization. Hope helps with everything whether it be recovering from a mental illness or hoping to get out of jail or prison. You have to hope that things will not always be bad. I have a lot to be thankful for also. I came a long way from learning that I had a mental illness and accepting that I did. Recovery is an individual thing and to know you can recover. Some who recover and go on to be psychiatrists and such wanted to make sure nobody went through what they did. Some were in college before their breakdown and went on to finish college. Others started after their mental illness and finished and are lawyers, mechanics etc. Some talk about what they went through and some others do not. Stigma I believe does not allow a lot of people who have recovered speak freely about it. Why speak out when you are going to be put down or ignored. Although the good side to speaking freely and openly about your mental illness is that you would advocate and show them that you have succeeded. That you did not let your mental illness keep you stuck in it. Finally you have to use your strengths to help you grow and recover.