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The purpose of this paper is to consider the process of working with a Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAP) and its outcomes in REFOCUS, a large five-year programme of recovery research.

Narrative reflections on the experience of working with LEAP were collected from five members and the chair of LEAP, two REFOCUS researchers and the principal investigator. These were synthesised to show both the process and outcomes of LEAP involvement in REFOCUS, and how involvement evolved organically over time.

Individual reflective accounts showed how working with LEAP impacted (to a greater or lesser extent) on each individual involved in the process, providing new insights and influencing, to varying degrees, the way in which they then worked with LEAP. Synthesis of the reflections showed how these changes impacted organically on LEAP’s process of involvement, with a shift in LEAP’s role from being purely consultative/advisory towards one which was much more about co-production, with LEAP pro-actively contributing to some aspects of REFOCUS in the later stages of the study.

The authors stress the importance of considering process as well as outcomes in patient and public involvement, and make practical recommendations for improving both in future programmes of research.

This is the first empirical evaluation of user and carer involvement and its development during a large recovery research programme.

This paper aims to describe a review and overview of the issue of developing guidance on implementing recovery and supporting organisational change, focused specifically on seeking to clarify the many different contributions that “lived experience” could make to training and workforce development.

The particular focus of our workshop was to clarify the key issues in workforce development, training for a recovery‐focused service and the contribution of “lived experience”. A particular outcome was to emphasise the benefits of collaborative co‐working between people who use services and practitioners at all levels.

A key element of our learning has been in valuing collaborative co‐working and the synergism of personal experience, professional training, research and evaluation.

The paper draws out what lessons have been learned already and sketches guidance for future practice and service development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the case for a truth and reconciliation (T&R) process in the context of mental health services.

The approach is a conceptual review of T&R approaches; a consideration of why they are important; and how they might be applied in the context of mental health services and psychiatry. First, the paper sets out a case for T&R in psychiatry, giving some recent examples of how this might work in practice. Then it outlines potential objections which complicate any simplistic adoption of T&R in this context.

In the absence of an officially sanctioned T&R process a grassroots reparative initiative in mental health services may be an innovative bottom-up approach to transitional justice. This would bring together service users, survivors and refusers of services, with staff who work/ed in them, to begin the work of healing the hurtful effects of experiences in the system.

This is the first paper in a peer-reviewed journal to explore the case for T&R in mental health services. The authors describe an innovative T&R process as an important transitional step towards accomplishing reparation and justice by acknowledging the breadth and depth of service user and survivor grievances. This may be a precondition for effective alliances between workers and service users/survivors. As a result, new forms of dialogic communication and horizontal democracy might emerge that could sustain future alliances and prefigure the social relations necessary for more humane mental health services.

This paper aims to explore the efforts of four American women living with psychosis to chart their recovery process in published memoirs.

This paper looks at the different types of stigma that the patient-authors claim to encounter.

The author discusses the impact that the patient-authors see stigma as having on their recovery, and why they need artistic spaces to express themselves.

The memoirs offer a space for the women to revisit their memories of psychosis, and to achieve at least a partial acceptance of these experiences.

This paper aims to introduce Seikatsu Rinsho, a values-based approach to supporting recovery based on identifying service user values and aspirations that have been developed since 1958 in Japan where mental health services are still hospital-based and user involvement is not well-developed. This paper believes this will be of great implications for future practices around the world.

Hope is essential to recovery and that hope is dependent on identifying what service users really want for themselves (aspirations) and then ensuring that these are communicated to – and supported by – professionals and carers. This is achieved through examining the life events, which are likely to trigger relapse for a specific individual, the important choices that the person has made throughout his/her life course and the reasons behind them. Through a process of “co-production”, an attempt is made to understand the values expressed in these choices in the context of family history over several generations.

The attempt to examine both life events throughout the life course and family history over generations was found to be an effective way to understand a service user and his/her family and then support recovery. The cases where even people with severe and persistent mental health problems have successfully achieved full recovery have been accumulated.

The limitations of the approach in the context of Japanese mental health services, and the necessity of additional evidence are acknowledged and some thoughts shall be given to future development.

Seikatsu Rinsho approach can provide a new angle to understand service users and family and a new way to support recovery.

The development of the recovery approach must mean a fundamental change in how mental health services see service users, for as the Social Perspectives Network paper rhetorically asks, ‘Whose Recovery is it?’, it is, of course, the service users' (Social Perspectives Network, 2007). The recent influential Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health report, suggests that professionals need to move from a position of ‘being on top, to being on tap’ (Shepherd et al, 2008). Service users need to take a more central role in the whole recovery debate. One of the ways that this aim can be realised is by looking at ‘recovery heroes’. These are individuals whose journey of recovery can inspire both other service users and professionals alike.