Recovery has several different meanings within the mental health and addiction communities. Given these different meanings, there is no one definition of the term that will prove acceptable to all parties involved. For the purposes of the policies put forth by the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services,, recovery is defined to include the following meanings: 1. A return to a normal state (e.g., following an episode of depression); 2. A process or period of recovering (e.g., following trauma); 3. A process of gaining or restoring something (such as, e.g., one's sobriety); and 4. An act of obtaining usable resources from unusable sources (such as, e.g., in prolonged psychosis). Taken together, these four meanings suggest a broad vision of recovery that involves a process of shifting in one's orientation and behavior from a focus on a troubling event or condition to the restoration or rebuilding of one's life in the aftermath of this event or condition in a way that makes sense of and integrates, if not actively builds on, elements taken from the event or condition involved.
A recovery-oriented system of care is an integrated network of culturally-responsive mental health and addiction services and supports that first and foremost promotes the recovery of individuals with psychiatric and/or substance use disorders and the community of caring and involved others to which these individuals belong. These services and supports include the full range of hospital and community-based services, acute and non-acute levels of care, active clinical treatment and rehabilitative interventions, and self-help and user-run supports that the CT Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services funds, facilitates, or fosters.
Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addictions Policy
