Abstract
Resurgent hopes for recovery from schizophrenia in the late 1980s had less to do with fresh empirical evidence than with focused political agitation. Recovery's promise was transformative: reworking traditional power relationships, conferring distinctive expertise on service users, rewriting the mandate of public mental health systems. Its institutional imprint has been considerably weaker. This article takes sympathetic measure of that outcome and provides an alternative framework for what recovery might mean, one drawn from disability studies and Sen's capabilities approach. By re-enfranchising agency, redressing material and symbolic disadvantage, raising the bar on fundamental entitlements and claiming institutional support for complex competencies, a capabilities approach could convert flaccid doctrine into useful guidelines and tools for public mental health.