The Social Nature of Recovery: Discussion and Implications for Practice

This article provides an interpretation of the key issues that emerged from the research, attempting a possible synthesis of the different themes described in the other papers and beginning a map of recovery as an ongoing interpersonal and social process. From a subjective point of view, there is a dimension of ‘social experience’, which implies the reconstruction of self and the importance of social life as a major goal. Recovery as an interactive journey requires an entire social context ‘provided with meanings’, rather than simply building social ties and relationships within a network. Socialization in a real environment means social inclusion, like efforts made of gaining the status of effective citizenship, in terms of rights, opportunities, and responses to social needs. Therefore, what citizenship is really about seems to be ‘recovery in a social context’. In this framework, a community service can act as a sort of mediator, an agent for integration, recognizing the uniqueness of those processes.