The process of mental and spiritual recovery in service users
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The role of spiritual well-being in the process of mental health recovery from the service user viewpoint - a qualitative investigation.
IRAS ID
237474
Contact name
Joanna M P Barber
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Research and Innovation Department, BSMHFT
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
There is evidence that mental health service users may have a different view of their own recovery from that held by clinicians. Some struggle with needs that are not being met by standard clinical interventions, and these needs impede their own sense of recovery, or "personal recovery". There is also evidence that at least some of these unmet needs will be spiritual. The aim of this study is to clarify them and work out why some people have these problems. This is a first step towards meeting these needs.
We have previously designed a questionnaire for service users to rate their own recovery, (Mini-Service user Recovery Evaluation scale or "Mini-SeRvE"), so that we can quantitatively monitor the process of personal recovery. Psychometric testing of this scale revealed 3 subscales or concepts of importance to service users for their personal recovery. These are: existential well-being, (sense of meaning and purpose in life), religious well-being, (how helpful they find their religion or spiritual belief) and mental ill-being, (concerning common mental problems faced by service users eg. depression, anxiety or isolation). In this forthcoming study, the processes involved in recovery as defined by these 3 components will be studied together with how these relate to the clinical assessment. For this, semi-structured interviews will be carried out with recovering service users in secondary care. These will focus upon the time course, interaction, and apparent causes and effects of progress according to the 3 components of personal recovery we have identified. Theories will then be constructed about the processes involved. This may lead to the development of new interventions to promote personal recovery. If some of the problems service users have in their personal recovery are indeed spiritual in nature, the outcomes of this study could inform the way in which spiritual care is practiced.REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/WM/0049
Date of REC Opinion
16 Apr 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion