Explained
What is hope?
Hope is a complex concept that has been defined in many different ways, especially within the context of mental health. Mental illnesses have been thought of as disorders of time in which a person’s past, present, and future become disconnected from each other. In this view, hope is conceived of as a thread that reconnects and reunifies past, present, and future, enabling people to find new meanings in their past and to imagine a better future for themselves. Hope is thus considered necessary for recovery from mental illness. For example, remembering how one overcame difficulties in the past can ignite hope for the present and future.
Authored by Professor Larry Davidson, Yale University, School of Medicine, the leading Mental Health Recovery scholar in collaboration with ForLikeMinds. Copyright Real MH Works, LLC.
