ABSTRACT
Mental ill health has had a long and turbulent history within the health sector. In a matter of a few hundred years it has transformed from being a spiritual/moral phenomenon to a chemical/structural abnormality in the brain to a symptom of life events which can be moderated and maintained in the community. Part of this transformation is due to the recovery model which originated from the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s and is now an ever-growing concept. In 2017, the Irish Health Service Executive published a two-year plan to support services in becoming recovery-orientated. As part of this, co-production was named as a principle that underpins recovery. As such, this chapter sets the scene for a critical discussion on many aspects of this underlying principle of recovery so that practitioners can (1) get a greater understanding of the concept, (2) implement the concept in their service and (3) over time sustain the concept with their services.
