Leisure as a cutting edge innovation to increase self-determination and personal resilience

![CDATA[Engaging in leisure can empower, heal, and strengthen people of all ages, backgrounds, and forms of disadvantage (Caldwell, 2001; Hildebrand, 2017; Iwasaki et al., 2014; Stumbo et al., 2015). Engaging in purposefully-designed leisure experiences has been found to offer specific benefits for individuals with a lived experience of mental illness, including skills development, social interaction (Iwasaki et al., 2014), and lifestyle and health behaviour change (Iwasaki, Coyle, & Shank, 2010). In the context of living with mental illness, experiences of leisure, as a positive, prosocial experience, may be a rare or infrequent occurrence (Fenton et al., 2017; Iwasaki et al., 2014; Iwasaki et al., 2010). This chapter discusses the leisure-based innovation, known as Recovery Camp (RC), from the perspective of the developing evidence base on RC’s role in offering leisure-based challenge, support, and facilitation of participant's self-determination and personal resilience within mental health recovery.]]