While professionals were still describing people diagnosed with “serious mental illness” as having a lifelong condition, for which the best possible outcome was maintenance, those of us with the lived experiences of severe emotional distress knew that we and others like us were able to achieve recovery. As mental health consumer/survivors, we understand the process of recovery because we are living it and bear witness to it. We understand that “everyone with a mental illness can recover” 1 and that all people can live full lives in the community because we are doing it every day.
