The concept of recovery has been described in papers as a state of psychic, physical and social recuperation of day-to-day functions. The scope of this article is to analyze the concepts of the term in different research methodologies and the paradigmatic evolution of the recovery concept. Systematic bibliographical research was conducted in the Pubmed database using the words “recovery + schizophrenia” limited to freely available full papers published in the previous two years. Nineteen papers were analyzed. The majority of the papers sought associations between characteristic data and recovery; few papers discussed the concept in a way to distinguish it from other words like cure or rehabilitation. Recovery as a state in which people with severe mental illness can feel like the creators of their own itinerary tend to be found in qualitative studies and in bibliographic reviews in which the meaning of recovery is not related to the lack of symptoms and tends to prioritize how participative the life of an individual can be despite the disease. Some quantitative studies detect this conceptual difference. In qualitative research there is an increase in the concept of recovery and in ways of promoting it.201125136Duarte, T., Recovery da Doença Mental: Uma Visão para os Sistemas e Serviços de Saúde Mental (2007) Análise Psicológica, 1 (35), pp. 127-133Jorge Monteiro, F., Matias, J., Atitudes Face ao Recovery na Doença Mental em Utilizadores e Profissionais de uma Organização Comunitária: Uma Ajuda na Planificação de Intervenções Efetivas? 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