Related Changes in Personal Recovery, Benefit Finding, and Sense of Coherence among People with Chronic Mental Illness: A Two-Wave Study

Abstract

Personal recovery is a process of developing new meaning and purpose in life beyond the catastrophic effects of mental illness. Benefit finding (BF) is conceptualized as finding positive changes or benefits through experiences in adversity. Sense of coherence (SOC) focuses on how people can stay healthy and maintain well-being, even in adversity. This study aimed to examine the relationships among the initial levels and longitudinal changes in personal recovery, BF, and SOC among people with chronic mental illness in Japan. In this longitudinal study, a two-wave self-report questionnaire survey was conducted for service users aged 20 or older with mental illness using convenience sampling method in 2014 and 2015. We applied the Latent Change Score approach. Model fit was evaluated according to the CFI and RMSEA. Among 373 eligible participants at baseline, valid responses in both T1 and T2 from 195 respondents were included in the study (valid response rate = 52.3%). Among them, 65.6% were male, with average age of 45.6. The model of the three constructs at the two time points had good to reasonable fit to the data. The initial levels and changes in personal recovery, BF, and SOC were significantly and positively related to each other.

Keywords:

• Benefit finding
• latent change score model
• mental illness
• personal recovery
• sense of coherence

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the work of Prof. Yuko Nagai (Jichi Medical University) in contributing to data collection for this study.

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by The Research Grant of Clinical Epidemiology, St Luke’s Life Science Institute, as well as Research grant from Faculty of Nursing, Jichi Medical University. And it was also supported by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant Numbers 25862241, 17K17513, 16K12269, 19K11216, and 19K10923.

Notes on contributors

Rie Chiba

Rie Chiba is a Professor in the Department of Nursing, Graduate School of Health Sciences, Kobe University, Japan. Areas of interest are positive psychology, psychiatric nursing, and personal recovery among people with mental illness.

Yoshihiko Yamazaki

Yoshihiko Yamazaki is a Professor in the Faculty of Social Welfare, Nihon Fukushi University, Japan. Areas of interest are Health Sociology and Sense of Coherence.

Yuki Miyamoto

Yuki Miyamoto is an Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatric Nursing, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Japan. Areas of interest are psychiatric nursing, and personal recovery among people with mental illness.

Akiko Funakoshi

Akiko Funakoshi is a Professor in the Kobe City College of Nursing, Japan. Areas of interest are psychiatric nursing, and personal recovery among people with mental illness.