The recovery program has 2 phases and consists of 20 classes, 1.5 hour per class and one class per week. We will introduce concepts of recovery and personal strengths in phase 1. Then, we will help participants to set goals and implement their plans in phase 2. Participants will fill out all questionnaires during the recruitment meeting.They will fill out the same questionnaires plus the course satisfaction survey in the end of phase 1 and 2. Six months later, participants will receive a follow-up interview and fill out the questionnaires again.

The control group will receive a spiritual book and complete the questionnaires at the same time as the recovery group.

The researchers designed a recovery group suited to Taiwanese with mental illness, according to content of the Pathways to Recovery (PTR): A Strengths Recovery Self-Help Workbook (Ridgway et al., 2002) and recovery-related literature (Davidson et al., 2005; Ridgway, 2001)

The scale consists of 45 items, with six subscales: the sense of hope, disability management/taking responsibility, regaining autonomy, social functioning/role performance, overall well-being, and willingness to help. It has good internal consistency and proper construct validity. The SRS utilizes a 4-point rating scale: never (0), seldom (1), sometimes (2), and often (3). Higher scores indicate better recovery. The developers also provide the cutoff scores for four recovery stages: Stage 1 (overwhelmed by the disability), 0-57; Stage 2 (struggling with disability), 58-90; Stage 3 (living with disability), 91-119; and Stage 4 (living beyond disability), 120-135.

The Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Survey (MOS-SS) is a multidimensional, self-administered instrument that addresses all five functions of an interpersonal relationship to assess the various functional dimensions of social support, including emotional , informational, tangible, affectionate, and positive interaction (Sherbourne & Stewart, 1991).For each item, the respondents were asked to indicate how often each support was available to them if they needed it. Response options were none of the time (1), a little of the time (2), some of the time (3), most of the time (4), and all of the time (5). For each scale, simple algebraic sums were computed, and then the raw scale scores were transformed into a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the score, the better the perception of social support. The reliability and validity of the measure in an American population of adults with chronic illness have been established (Sherbourne & Stewart, 1991).

The course discussion of the end of phase 1 and phase 2 will be recorded. In addition, the participants of the intervention group will be interviewed at follow up. Those qualitative data will be transcribed and analyzed.