An overview of mental health recovery-oriented practices: potentiality, challenges, prejudices, and misunderstandings

Objectives The implementation of recovery-oriented practices in the daily activities of mental health organizations is nowadays a challenge internationally. However, there is a lack of studies on the methodology of these practices and on the challenges faced by organizations in implementing them. The purpose of this paper is to report the state-of-the-art of recovery-oriented practices in mental health organizations. Methods This paper is a narrative literature review of relevant articles and prior works that have been central to the topic including the history of recovery-oriented practices, recovery-oriented interventions, advantages, and obstacles in implementing recovery-oriented practices in mental health organizations. Results Procedures for implementing recovery-oriented practices in mental health organizations and several recovery-oriented interventions have been tested. Despite unsolved challenges, recovery-oriented practices have shown the potential to improve mental health care, with a positive impact on the quality of life, the autonomy of service users and health outcomes. Conclusions The implementation of recovery-oriented practices requires a change in the paradigm of care in mental health services that may need to modify traditional priorities, and also for the stakeholders who need to review, redefine and re-evaluate their roles and personal identities. Thus, specific strategies might be adopted to reduce the fear of innovations and increase the awareness of advantages.