Abstract
The CHIME Model has become the dominant model of mental health recovery. The model has been grounded in the lived experience literature of people recovering from mental health problems. Four of the components were first articulated by Australian researchers. These were Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment. English researchers added Connection, thus forming the acronym CHIME. In this paper we show how we have added to this basic model. Robert and Jerome were the first to describe C-CHIME, with the C reflecting Creativity. This was also Jerome’s experience in mental health services, that often those people who recovered most, had creative talents, such as photography, artistic skills, filmmaking, or poetry. Lisa and Jerome discovered that a critical element in recovering from addiction was the concept of Growth. For someone to give up an all-consuming addiction, something needs to replace this in their lives. This could be education or developing a new career. Ije found that there were additional critical elements in her recovery from lupus. She felt that Pain, Acceptance, Adaptation and again Growth, were key in addition to the core elements of CHIME. Andrew Voyce briefly describes his own long journey of recovery that took place over a 20-year period. He illustrates how CHIME can be harnessed to explain his own recovery. Finally, we look at how practitioners might apply the CHIME model and its variants in their clinical practice. We note the lack of an assessment that might just guide this process, but which could also serve as an outcome measure.