DescriptionIt is widely recognized that many people with serious mental illness experience severe distress and disruption of their goal and role functioning, and there is widespread and growing interest in personal recovery as a positive response to that distress and disruption. There is considerably less consensus as to what, precisely, constitutes “recovery” in this context, and what psychological mechanisms might underlie it. This thesis will briefly survey the thinking about recovery from psychiatric disability, then propose and test a self-regulation model of goal structures, skills, efficacy, and affect to improve our understanding of this important phenomenon.