Translating mental health recovery guidelines into recovery-oriented innovations: A strategy combining implementation teams and a facilitated planning process

The impacts of implementing recovery innovations: a conceptual framework grounded in qualitative research

Background

Implementing mental health recovery into services is a policy priority in Canada and globally. To that end, a 5 year study was undertaken with seven organisations providing mental health and housing services to people living with a mental health challenge to implement guidelines for the transformation of services and systems towards a recovery-orientation. Multi-stakeholder implementation teams were established and a facilitated process guided teams to choosing and planning for the implementation of one recovery innovation. The recovery innovations chosen were hiring peer support workers, Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP), a family support group, and staff recovery training.

Methods

This study reports on data collected at the post-implementation stage. 90 service users, service providers, family members, managers, other actors and knowledge users participated in 41 group, individual or dyad semi-structured interviews. The interview guides included open-ended questions eliciting participants’ impressions regarding the impact of implementing the innovation on service users, service providers and organisations. We applied a collaborative qualitative content analysis approach in NVivo12 to coding and interpreting the data generated from these questions.

Results

Eighteen impacts of implementing recovery innovations from the perspectives of diverse stakeholder groups were identified. Three impacts of working as an implementation team member and as part of a research project were also identified. Impacts were developed into a conceptual framework organised around four overall categories of impact: Ways of being, Ways of interacting, Ways of thinking, and Ways of operating and doing business.

Conclusions

The IMpacts of Recovery Innovations (IMRI) framework version 1 can assist researchers, evaluators and decision-makers identify, explore and understand impact in the context of recovery innovations. The framework helps fill a gap in conceptualising service and organisation-level impacts. Future research is needed to validate the framework and map it to existing methods for studying impact.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13033-022-00559-2.

Identifying and Exploring Sustainability Determinants of Mental Health Recovery-Oriented Interventions: A Mixed Methods Study Protocol

Mental health recovery is the new paradigm in the mental health service delivery system worldwide. Recovery-oriented services go beyond traditional clinical care that is centered on symptom remission, aiming to help people: restore social connections with other individuals and the community; develop hope and optimism for the future; reconstruct an identity beyond that of a “mental patient”; discover meaning in life; and feel empowered to gain control over treatment (CHIME framework). Over the last ten years, several efforts at implementation of recovery-oriented interventions have been documented in the scientific literature. However, little attention has been given to their sustainability, even though it is reported that not all health interventions can fully sustain their activities beyond the initial implementation phase. The aim of this mixed methods case study is to better understand the factors that determine the sustainability of two recovery-oriented interventions (peer support and recovery training) after their roll-out in four organizations in Canada that provide community housing for adults with mental health challenges. Qualitative and quantitative data will be collected from managers, service providers, and implementation team members that oversaw the implementation process along with organizational documents. Data collection and analysis will be guided by the Consolidated Framework for Sustainability Constructs in Healthcare, the Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications, and the Program Sustainability Assessment Tool. Findings will expand our current evidence base on the intersection of sustainability and mental health recovery interventions that remains under-explored.