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| The Search for Common Ground |
The Search for Common Ground
During the years 2000 through 2002, we gathered consumers’ experiential accounts and theoretical articles about recovery (Andresen, Oades and Caputi, 2003). Because these narratives were published during the 1990s, they are not considered to be overly influenced by the emerging recovery research literature. The consumer stories were not always specific about their diagnosis, but were always referring to enduring illness; schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were the most often identified. (See Appendix 2.A at the end of this chapter for a list of the consumer literature reviewed.) We also included the findings of extant qualitative research in our review.
(See Appendix 2.B at the end of this chapter for a list of this literature reviewed.) An overview revealed four important features in the literature:
. although there are different meanings of recovery, there is broad agreement amongst consumers;
. there are differences of opinion amongst consumers about a number of aspects of recovery;
. there are strong common themes among consumers’ accounts of recovery;
. researchers have identified steps, phases or stages of recovery in qualitative work with consumers.
In the following sections, we first describemeanings of recovery already in use, and compare and contrast these with the definition we derived from the consumerauthoredliterature.
We alsodiscuss someaspectsonwhichpersonal narrativesdiffered, and which we took into consideration in developing this working definition of psychological recovery. Common themes are categorized into four component processes of recovery, which provided the foundation for the definition of psychological recovery and the conceptual model based on this definition. Finally, we examine the findingsofpreviouslyexistingqualitative research,whichwesynthesizedtoprovidefive stages of recovery. These stages provide added structure to the recovery model.
During the years 2000 through 2002, we gathered consumers’ experiential accounts and theoretical articles about recovery (Andresen, Oades and Caputi, 2003). Because these narratives were published during the 1990s, they are not considered to be overly influenced by the emerging recovery research literature. The consumer stories were not always specific about their diagnosis, but were always referring to enduring illness; schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were the most often identified. (See Appendix 2.A at the end of this chapter for a list of the consumer literature reviewed.) We also included the findings of extant qualitative research in our review.
(See Appendix 2.B at the end of this chapter for a list of this literature reviewed.) An overview revealed four important features in the literature:
. although there are different meanings of recovery, there is broad agreement amongst consumers;
. there are differences of opinion amongst consumers about a number of aspects of recovery;
. there are strong common themes among consumers’ accounts of recovery;
. researchers have identified steps, phases or stages of recovery in qualitative work with consumers.
In the following sections, we first describemeanings of recovery already in use, and compare and contrast these with the definition we derived from the consumerauthoredliterature.
We alsodiscuss someaspectsonwhichpersonal narrativesdiffered, and which we took into consideration in developing this working definition of psychological recovery. Common themes are categorized into four component processes of recovery, which provided the foundation for the definition of psychological recovery and the conceptual model based on this definition. Finally, we examine the findingsofpreviouslyexistingqualitative research,whichwesynthesizedtoprovidefive stages of recovery. These stages provide added structure to the recovery model.
