Recovery from psychosis: a user informed review of self-report instruments for measuring recovery

Abstract

Background

Mental health services are being encouraged to adopt a recovery approach, creating a requirement for standardised measures of recovery to be developed and embedded within services. Measurement of this unique concept is inherently difficult, but it is feasible and valid provided that service users and clinicians work collaboratively.

Aims

To evaluate which measures of recovery have clinical utility and are acceptable to service users.

Method

Instruments included in this review are (1) quantitative self-report measures, (2) published in a peer reviewed English language journal and (3) designed to measure personal recovery. The review team included two service-user researchers to allow evaluation of acceptability to service users.

Results

Twenty-five measures of recovery were identified; six of these met the inclusion criteria. A summary table of the measures is included to enable readers to make an informed choice of measure for their specific needs, along with an overview of each measure.

Conclusions

The Recovery Assessment Scale appears to be the most acceptable and valid measure currently available. No “gold-standard” measure of recovery has been developed to date. Further research is required to examine the longitudinal reliability of existing tools, and their utility within clinical services and as outcome measures.

Keywords:

• recovery
• psychosis
• assessment
• measurement
• instrument
• self report

Acknowledgements

This report/article presents independent research commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Programme Grants for Applied Research scheme (RP-PG-0606-1086). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.