This volume explores service users' lived experiences of mental health recovery within a day centre setting where creative activity and social support were key aspects of the service. These two facets, creative activity and social support are established as conducive to mental health, particularly when in partnership with one another and when there is a venue in which to gather on a regular and frequent basis. McDonnell argues that the uplifting effects of creative activities such as art, music, and creative reading and writing, alongside the communality incorporated into the general ethos and social setting of many of the projects cited, are a positive force for change and that resource allocation and integrated care models should reflect this new paradigm.

This book weaves together service users' lived experiences of mental health recovery and ideas about how creative activities such as art, music, and creative reading and writing can promote it, particularly within social and community settings.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Evolutionary Programming, EP 97, held in Indianapolis, IN, USA, in April 1997.
The 36 revised full papers presented were carefully selected for inclusion in the proceedings. The papers are organized in sections on evolutionary methods for modeling and training, alternative frameworks for the computational study of evolutionary social systems, genetic programming: issues and applications, issues in evolutionary optimization, enhanced evolutionary operators, theory and analysis of evolutionary computations, issues in adaptability: theory and practice, and evolution and NP-hard problems.