Ariadne’s thread: a promising new multidisciplinary tool to foster clients’ resilience throughout the rehabilitation process

Abstract

Introduction: Resilience plays an important role in the rehabilitation process as it helps people adapt and grow through difficulties. Ariadne’s Thread is one of the few assessment and intervention tools that aim to maximize clients’ resilience but its impacts have yet to be studied.

Purpose: This study explored health professionals’ perceptions regarding the impact of Ariadne’s Thread on clients, on themselves and on the rehabilitation process. Method: An exploratory qualitative clinical research design was used to conduct semi-structured interviews with ten health professionals who used Ariadne’s Thread directly or indirectly with clients. Results: Health professionals perceived that Ariadne’s Thread had a positive impact on clients’ personal factors, especially resilience, self-knowledge, self-esteem and motivation. Moreover, as it fosters a common understanding of clients and use of their strengths and interests in interventions, Ariadne’s Thread facilitates the interdisciplinary rehabilitation process. It also enables professionals to confirm their treatment approaches and facilitates therapeutic relationships. Conclusions: Ariadne’s Thread is an innovative intervention and a promising way to enhance clients’ resilience. Through a positive, holistic and client-centered vision, Ariadne’s Thread can have a positive impact on the rehabilitation process, according to the perceptions of the health professionals in this study.

Implications for rehabilitation

• Ariadne’s Thread (AT) is one of the few assessment and intervention tools that aims to maximise clients’ resilience and spirituality, and enables professionals to address important themes not usually covered in rehabilitation.

• Due to its effects on knowledge of the client and clients’ resilience, self-esteem, strengths and spirituality, AT can enhance the rehabilitation process.

• Nevertheless, integrating resilience into practice requires a major paradigm shift, not only focusing on treatment results or helping clients to adapt to their disabilities, but also taking into account clients’ and their families’ strengths and resources.

Keywords:

• Client-centered practice
• motivation
• positive psychology
• self-esteem
• self-knowledge
• spirituality
• strengths
• therapeutic relationship

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of Johanne Desrosiers and Johanne Tardif in developing the project. Finally, we would like to thank the participants and their clients for sharing their valuable time and life experiences.

Declaration of interest

This study was funded by the Université de Sherbrooke. Mélanie Levasseur is a Fonds de la recherche du Québec en santé (FRQS) junior 1 researcher (grant no. 26815). The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interests which are relevant to this article.