Recovery from depression

This is a very simple image. The blue represents the obvious and the
sunflower is a frequent image in mental health.

Recovery itself is a word I haven't taken the care to find a precise
definition for.

Does it mean the end of illness, i.e. the end of the symptoms of the
illness? Or the end of the need to treat, i.e. the individual no longer
takes medication or requires professional therapy? The former question
implies remission of illness but only through medication and/or therapy.
The latter supposes the point at which that is no longer needed and the
individual has coping strategies, self management technqiues and the
capability to survive the illness caused by society.

Or does it mean something else entirely? I imagine that many people will
have as many definitions.

Its a word of hope though. Its the light at the end of the tunnel for a
person who has been told they have a chronic and enduring mental
illness. I've known the pain of understanding mental illness as
something that never goes away. I never heard the word recovery and was
given the only hope of high levels of medication to solve my 'illness'
and even then I might relapse back into madness.