Subjective judgements of perceived recovery from psychosis

Abstract

Background

Recent conceptualisations of recovery from psychosis have recognised the importance of psychosocial aspects as well as the presence or absence of symptoms. Qualitative research and personal accounts of recovery highlight its subjective and idiosyncratic nature. This study aims to explore subjective judgements of recovery from the perspective of service users, and examine the agreement and consistency in such judgements across different measures of recovery. It also aims to investigate the relationships between subjective judgements of recovery and psychosocial factors.

Methods

A total of 122 participants with experience of psychosis completed three self-report measures of recovery judgements, as well as measures of psychological functioning (including self-esteem, optimism, anxiety and depression) and socio-demographic measures.

Results

Judgements about recovery from psychosis across the three measures, while showing a trend, also show within-person variability. Recovery judgements were significantly correlated with each other and with all psychological variables, but were not associated with socio-demographic variables except for age. Regression analyses showed that recovery judgements were predicted by mood, optimism and self-esteem.

Conclusions

Subjective judgements of recovery were seen to be idiosyncratic, with people appearing to have different thresholds for perceived recovery. The conclusions of the existing qualitative research and first-person accounts appear generalisable to larger samples.

Keywords:

• recovery
• psychosis
• measurement
• psychosocial factors

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the RECOVERY Programme Group and the Mental Health Research Network for their support. We also thank Liz Pitt, Martina Kilbride, Rory Byrne, Tim Rawcliffe and the members of our Service User Reference Group for their inspiration and provision of feedback from a service user perspective.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no conflict of interest.

This paper outlines independent research commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health.