TITLE:
Recovery approaches in mental health: A qualitative evaluation of the Whole Life Therapy programme for persons with schizophrenia
AUTHORS:
Brian Littlechild, Andrew Henry Smith, Glynis Meredith-Windle, Tim Gale, Michele Lloyd, Christopher Hawley
KEYWORDS:
Mental Health Recovery; Whole Life Programme; Evaluation; Service User Perspectives
JOURNAL NAME:
Health,
Vol.5 No.3A,
March
30,
2013
ABSTRACT: The recovery approach within mental health services has
in recent years been influential in promoting more active participation from
service users concerning their treatment and progress, within a move towards
models of interventions based on social models and ideas of service user empowerment.
Although mental health recovery models are often heralded as ideological
goals, comparatively little has been documented about the means of achieving
these. This article sets out the nature and content of the Whole Life Programme,
used within the Hertfordshire NHS Partnership Foundation Trust, and the results
of qualitative research into the programme that set out to analyse the impact
of its delivery from the perspectives of service users. The research examined
the experiences and views of participants receiving
treatment several months after the completion of the programme, and
also of those who withdrew prematurely, in
order to learn from these experiences,
adding to our understanding of how one recovery based approach, the
Whole Life Manual, can be applied in practice.