Clinical and personal recovery for people with schizophrenia in China: prevalence and predictors

Abstract

Background

Recovery from schizophrenia is a multidimensional construct that includes two categories: clinical recovery (symptomatic and functional remission) and personal recovery.

Aims

To investigate the overlap between clinical and personal recovery and identify correlates of each.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was conducted with 356 people living with schizophrenia and randomly selected from 12 communities in China. Clinical recovery was assessed using both the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) and the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). Personal recovery was assessed using the 8-item Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS). Disability and quality of life were assessed using the WHODAS 2.0 and WHOQOL-BREF-2, respectively.

Results

Our results showed a recovery proportion of 36.52% for clinical recovery (66.57% for symptomatic remission and 40.73% for functional remission), and 17.42% for personal recovery. Only 8.99% of individuals achieved overall recovery (i.e. they met criteria for both clinical and personal recovery), and there was only a modest correlation (r = 0.26) between these two types of recovery. Overall recovery was only correlated with the quality of life (OR = 1.46, 95% CI: 1.05, 2.03), but there were various correlates for clinical recovery and personal recovery separately.

Conclusions

Recovery from schizophrenia involves both clinical and personal recovery, but when examined in the same sample, personal recovery, and thus overall recovery, is less common, particularly among people with schizophrenia in China.

Keywords:

• Clinical recovery
• personal recovery
• schizophrenia
• quality of life
• China

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank individuals for their participation in this study, family members who supported their participation, and staff from the Changsha Psychiatric Hospital and the 12 community health centers for their collaboration and support.

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The datasets and research materials used are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The “Central Government Support for the Local Management and Treatment of Severe Mental Illnesses Project”, also named as “686 Program” due to its first financial allotment of 6.86 million Renminbi ($829,000) in 2004. The 686 Program is China’s largest demonstration project in mental health service aimed at integrating hospital and community services for serious mental illness.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71804197).