Nowadays people around the world experience various mental health difficulties on a daily basis. From the mild symptoms that can be easily resolved by their General Practitioners to more severe problems significantly affecting their everyday functioning and participation in daily activities. These problems may need to be dealt with the referral to a specialist service. According to Mental Health Act (2001) each person in care of Mental Health Service must have an individual care plan (MHA 2001; art 15&16). Mental Health Commission in its document related to individual Care Planning in Mental Health Service outlined that recovery of a client needs to be at the centre of all that nurses do and care plans are here like a key tools, guiding nursing work in this process (MHC 2012, p.8).
Presented essay attempts to explore how nursing care and interventions support the process of patient’s recovery. In further part of it focus will be on how individual care plans reflect process of recovery and how they guide nurses towards it.

Concept of ‘recovery’ in Mental Health slightly differs from adopted definition. Usually a person with severe mental health problems such as Schizophrenia or Bi-polar cannot fully recover from the illness like it takes place in most of the patients with physical illnesses. The concept of recovery in Mental Health addresses issues related to building-up self-esteem, learning to control the illness; recognizing symptoms of relapse; returning to normal life and enjoying it as much as possible. It is a long journey that involves intensive work and collaboration of all members of MDT, patient itself and his/her family. From the client’s point of view recovery process concentrates mainly on setting up and achieving small goals, building-up hope, personal growth, education, overcoming symptoms of illness, building-up support network and