From stories to strength: recovery narratives in mental health care
In recent years, there has been growing attention in mental health care for personal recovery: the notion that people can lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, even when mental health problems do not fully disappear. Many people report that experiences of others who have gone through similar mental health challenges can support them in their own recovery process. This dissertation examines how recovery narratives can help people with mental health problems. A new intervention was developed with recovery narratives as its core ingredient.
Several focus groups were conducted to co-create a new intervention. Service users, peer support workers and other mental healthcare professionals contributed ideas on what the intervention should look like. In addition, findings of previous international research on key ingredients of recovery narratives—what makes them helpful or unhelpful—were incorporated. Together, this input resulted in offering a digital intervention based on carefully selected recovery narratives in text, audio, and video formats.
The development process is described in multiple articles, guided by intervention mapping methods. Subsequently, the ‘STORY MINE’ intervention was offered and evaluated in a pilot study to examine its feasibility, acceptability, and potential outcomes. The intervention appeared to be feasible and acceptable. Participants generally experienced the narratives as inspiring and meaningful, suggesting that recovery narratives may be a valuable and accessible addition to existing treatments in mental health care.