Wellness & Recovery Model

Institute for Wellness and Recovery Initiatives
Wellness and Recovery Framework 

Recovery has been viewed a process of (re)gaining physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional balance when one encounters illness, crisis, or trauma. As a process, the person living with a mental illness learns to accept the illness and its associated challenges while adjusting attitudes, beliefs, and sometimes both life roles and goals. For some people recovery is the ability to work, to live in housing of one’s own choice, to have friends and intimate relationships, and to become a contributing member of one’s community. Recovery is a process of healing and restoring health and wellness during episodes of illness and life stressors. Recovery is not equated with cure but rather viewed as an on-going process in which a person may be vulnerable to relapse and exacerbations of symptoms. 

Wellness is a conscious, deliberate process that requires a person to become aware of and make choices for a more satisfying lifestyle (National Wellness Institute). Wellness is holistic and multi-dimensional, and includes physical, emotional, intellectual, social, environmental, and spiritual dimensions. Wellness is an active process of creating and adapting patterns of behavior that lead to improved health in the wellness dimensions. A wellness lifestyle includes a self-defined balance of health habits such as adequate sleep and rest, productivity, exercise, participation in meaningful activity, nutrition, productivity, social contact, and supportive relationships (Swarbrick, 1997, 2006). The treatment of diabetes is a useful analogy to maintaining wellness when a person has a psychiatric diagnosis. We believe people can acheive recovery and wellness when they have opportunities to choose and commit to a daily routine of medication, exercise, adequate nutrition, sleep and wake cycles, and rest (Swarbrick, 1997).  It is important to focus on a persons overall wellness rather than solely on the mental illness and presenting problems.