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Globally, the mental health system is being transformed into a strengths-based, recovery-oriented system of care, to which the concept of active living is central. Based on an integrative review of the literature, this paper presents a heuristic conceptual framework of the potential contribution that enjoyable and meaningful leisure experiences can have in active living, recovery, health and life quality among persons with mental illness. This framework is holistic and reflects the humanistic approach to mental illness endorsed by the United Nations and the World Health Organization. It also includes ecological factors such as health care systems and environmental factors as well as cultural influences that can facilitate and/or hamper recovery, active living and health/life quality. Unique to this framework is our conceptualization of active living from a broad-based and meaning-oriented perspective rather than the traditional, narrower conceptualization which focuses on physical activity and exercise. Conceptualizing active living in this manner suggests a unique and culturally sensitive potential for leisure experiences to contribute to recovery, health and life quality. In particular, this paper highlights the potential of leisure engagements as a positive, strengths-based and potentially cost-effective means for helping people better deal with the challenges of living with mental illness.

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Leisure may potentially play a key role in rehabilitation counseling, including psychiatric rehabilitation. Based on recovery and positive psychology frameworks in which meaning-making is a central concept, this study examined the role of leisuregenerated meanings (LGMs) experienced by culturally diverse individuals with mental illness in potentially helping them better cope with stress, adjust to and recover from mental illness, as well as feel more actively engaged in life. One-onone survey interviews were conducted with African (n = 35), Hispanic/Latino (n = 28), Caucasian (n = 28), and Asian (n = 8) American adults (aged between 23 and 78) (total n = 101) with mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder, n = 32; major depression, n = 23; schizophrenia, n = 22) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Using general linear modeling, we found that LGMs significantly predicted the adjustment to and recovery from mental illness, leisure stress-coping, leisure satisfaction, and perceived active living positively, and lower leisure boredom. The findings have implications for psychiatric rehabilitation to better support persons with mental illness from a strengths-based, meaning-centered, and active-living promotion perspective in which leisure seems to play an important role.