The traditional model of the treatment of schizophrenia is focused on two main domains of this disease – psychopathological symptoms (mainly delusions, hallucinations, anxiety, anhedonia, apathy) and neurocognitive deficits (mainly in the form of attention, memory and executive function disorders). With the development of new therapeutic options (including new antipsychotics, psychotherapeutic options, biological methods of brain stimulation using magnetic fields or electric currents and a number of other interventions, e.g. rehabilitation of cognitive functions), there is growing interest among psychiatrists in developing a more complex and complete model of recovery that also includes functional improvement. Although the concept of functional improvement seems intuitively simple and comprehensible, its operationalisation faces a number of obstacles, with the result that currently we do not have precise criteria of this phenomenon.