Reconnecting: The Client Experience of Recovery From Psychosis

PROBLEM: To understand the experience of recovery from psychosis from the consumer/client perspective. METHODS: A naturalistic, qualitative design with an ethnographic method for data analysis. Subjects (N = 10) were interviewed prior to and during the initial year of treatment with clozapine or risperidone. FINDINGS: Participants described recovery from psychosis as a process that started with improvements in their thinking and feeling, and extended to a series of reconnections with their environment. These reconnections icluded staff and family. Thinking moved from being focused on their internal self to a larger world. CONCLUSION: A person's recovery from pschosis involves the entire self, bringing all components of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of themselves into their experiences of life.