You realise you are better when you want to live, want to go out, want to see people: Recovery as assemblage.

Inger Beate Larsen,Alain Topor,Monica Strømland,Jan Georg Friesinger

doi:10.1177/00207640211019452

Inger Beate Larsen, Alain Topor + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1177/00207640211019452

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Abstract

Background:The lack of social and material perspectives in descriptions of recovery processes is almost common in recovery research.Aim:Consequently, we investigated recovery stories and how people with mental health and/or addiction challenges included social and material aspects in these stories.Method:We conducted focus group and individual interviews. We investigated how the participants narrated their stories and how they assembled places and people in their recovery stories.Results:We found that narratives of recovery became assemblages where humans and their environments co-exist and are interdependent.Conclusion:As such, narratives about recovery are about everyday assemblages of well-being into which stories of insecurity are interwoven, without a start or stop point.

Highlights

The lack of social and material perspectives in descriptions of recovery processes is almost common in recovery research
(1) A number of long-term follow-up studies were published that challenged the understanding of schizophrenias as long-term illnesses, and some of them stressed the socio-cultural aspects involved in recovery processes (Bleuler, 1978; Ciompi, 1980; Harding et al, 1987; Warner, 1985/2004; WHO, 1979)
When people with user experiences within mental health or addiction services told us about their recovery processes, it became clear that recovery stories illustrate an assemblage where humans and their environments co-exist and are interdependent

Summary

Introduction

The lack of social and material perspectives in descriptions of recovery processes is almost common in recovery research. (2) Inspired by black and women’s liberation movements fighting for their civil rights, users of mental health services started to organise themselves (Davidson et al, 2010) These societal aspects disappeared in the most widely accepted definition of recovery formulated by Anthony (1993). His definition focuses on recovery within an illness model as an individual process that is concerned solely with changes within the person, without considering their social and material context. Boardman (2011) emphasis the connection between material resources like money, housing and other goods as vital for being a citizen and for the recovery process He describes how people having mental health problems suffer from ‘material deprivation’ because they often live in poor neighbourhoods and poor housing conditions, resulting in social exclusion and non-recovery (Boardman, 2011). To include the social and material perspective, Topor et al (2020) suggested a social model to understand recovery: Recovery is a deeply social, unique and shared process in which our living conditions, material surroundings, attitudes, values, feelings, skills, and/or roles are changing

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