Illness vs recovery

The chart below may help you identify where you are in terms of recovery from a mental illness:

Comparison of persons who have been labelled with mental illness.

	Person labelled with mental illness	Person who has recovered from mental illness
Decision-making	Professionals need to make major decisions = dependent	Capable of making decisions for oneself = self-determining
Major social supports	Mental health system provides social supports	Network of friends provides major supports
Social role/identity	Consumer, a schizophrenic a bipolar or mental	Person who is a worker, parent, student or other role
Role of medication	Medication the sole intervention which must be complied with	One tool among many freely chosen by the individual
Emotional intelligence	Strong emotions are symptoms to be treated by a professional	Person expresses and works through emotions by self or with friends
Global assessment of functioning	GAF Score of 60 or below: untrained person would describe labelled person as sick	GAF Score of 61 or above: untrained person would describe the recovered person as not sick (normal)
Sense of self	Weak, defined by people in authority	Strong, defined from within and by peer interactions

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