Rethinking recovery

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore recovery as knowledge and practices. In health sciences, clinical practice and public debates, the understanding of recovery relates to various interpretations of disease, illness and health. Our analytical perspective is inspired by theories of knowledge production; in particular, Jasanoff’s work on co-production of knowledge. In the present chapter, we unpack two ideal-typical understandings of recovery. According to the first understanding, recovery is disease-oriented and relates to the treatment’s curative effects (recovery as outcome), and knowledge production is separated from the persons and situations involved. The second, meanwhile, sees recovery in terms of a personal experiential process focusing on illness experience and the process of overcoming or coming to terms with illness in real-life situations (recovery as experience). Here, knowledge production integrates persons, contexts and culture. Recovery as outcome concerns health professionals’ responsibility to choose the most effective treatment for patients, informed by quantitative effect studies. Recovery as experience embraces the process undertaken and valued by the individual person in the act of living that can be informed by qualitative interview studies. In the third section, we elaborate on how these two understandings of recovery are integrated into contemporary clinical practice (recovery as coproduction).