Untangling the nonrecyclable citizen: a critical reconceptualization of responsibility in recovery.

Over the last decades, international research, policy, and practice in the field of mental health care and a complementary variety of social work and social service delivery methods have been focused on recovery as a dominant concept. Emphasizing the service user's responsibility appears to be a central component in the empowering process of recovery. Using a critical disability studies perspective, we aimed to untangle the relationship between the individual citizen with mental health problems and the society in which the recovery discourse operates in Belgium.

Rediscovering recovery: reconceptualizing underlying assumptions of citizenship and interrelated notions of care and support.

Over the last few decades, research, policy, and practice in the field of mental health care and a complementary variety of social work and social service delivery have internationally concentrated on recovery as a promising concept. In this paper, a conceptual distinction is made between an individual approach and a social approach to recovery, and underlying assumptions of citizenship and interrelated notions and features of care and support are identified. It is argued that the conditionality of the individual approach to recovery refers to a conceptualization of citizenship as normative, based on the existence of a norm that operates in every domain of our society.