Recovery-Oriented Network Meetings in Mental Healthcare: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Recovery-oriented cross-sectoral collaboration is a cornerstone of the debate concerning health professionals and users of mental health services and constitutes an objective in government health policy in Scandinavia and other Western countries. Users do not find that professionals communicate with each other across specific sectors regarding plans that have been prepared. They often experience that they have to start over again every time they switch between treatment locations. The aim of this study is to develop a recovery-oriented model for network meetings. Health professionals and users with experience from mental health services participated in three workshops to discuss and achieve a plan for recovery-oriented network meetings. Knowledge was generated in dynamic research cycles that were experiential, presentational, propositional, and practical. Themes were developed and framed by a content analysis. Recommendations are presented as a narrative from all the participants involved. The overall theme was ‘more focus on personal recovery’ with subthemes such as ‘CHIME as a recovery-oriented approach’. In addition, other themes were generated such as ‘open dialogical meetings’, with subthemes such as ‘meeting structures’ and ‘open dialogues’. This study concludes recommendations to promote a recovery-oriented approach in cross-sectoral network meetings inspired by theoretical perspectives along with the experiences and knowledge of co-researchers.