A narrative study of mental health recovery: exploring unique, open-ended and collective processes

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Guided by narrative theory and by use of a narrative-in-action approach, the aim of this study was to explore how mental health recovery unfolds through individuals’ engagement in everyday activities.

Method: Data were created through participant observations with four individuals while doing everyday activities, and analysed through a narrative, interpretive approach.

Findings: The findings show how mental health recovery involves unique and open-ended processes of narrative meaning-making, which unfold through an interplay between everyday activities, places and persons.

Discussion: Based on these findings, we discuss how we may understand and support mental health recovery as collective processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnography
• everyday activities
• meaning making
• mental health
• narrative
• participant observation
• recovery

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Nina Petersen Reed

Nina Petersen Reed is a PhD-candidate in health sciences at NTNU. She finished her bachelor’s degree in social work in 2006, and then worked in community mental health services until 2015. She completed her master’s degree in social work and acquired a PhD-position in 2015. Her PhD-project is titled “Mental Health – Influence and Participation in Everyday Life”, and this is the third research article from this project.

Staffan Josephsson

Staffan Josephsson is a professor of occupational therapy at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Everyday activities, creativity, involvement and participation for people with chronic disabilities have been central concepts in Josephsson’s research. He has largely worked with narrative theory and methods to develop knowledge about how people establish meaning and change.

Sissel Alsaker

Sissel Alsaker is a professor in health sciences at the Department of Mental Health, NTNU. She is an occupational therapist, and her research focus has been exploring the narrative nature of everyday activities from the perspectives of persons living with chronic conditions. She has developed the narrative-in-action approach.