Personal-recovery-oriented community mental healthcare: qualitative evaluation of a developmental project.

Objectives: Mental healthcare is commonly aimed at reducing symptoms in individual service users. When only symptomatic recovery is addressed, not all service users experience sufficient recovery, and when care is aimed only at individuals (instead of the neighbourhood), not all people in need of mental healthcare are reached. This study evaluated a project that aimed to improve mental healthcare in a neighbourhood, by improving healthcare providers' outreach to the residents living in the neighbourhood, by improving collaboration among healthcare providers and focussing on the residents' personal recovery.