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BACKGROUND: In times of pandemics, social distancing, isolation, and quarantine have precipitated depression, anxiety, and substance misuse. Scientific literature suggests that patients living with mental health problems or illnesses (MHPIs) who interact with peer support workers (PSWs) experience not only the empathy and connectedness that comes from similar life experiences but also feel hope in the possibility of recovery. So far, it is the effect of mental health teams or programs with PSWs that has been evaluated. OBJECTIVE: This paper presents the protocol for a web-based intervention facilitated by PSWs. The five principal research questions are whether this intervention will have an impact in terms of (Q1) personal-civic recovery and (Q2) clinical recovery, (Q3) how these recovery potentials can be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, (Q4) how the lived experience of persons in recovery can be mobilized to cope with such a situation, and (Q5) how sex and gender considerations can be taken into account for the pairing of PSWs with service users beyond considerations based solely on psychiatric diagnoses or specific MHPIs. This will help us assess the impact of PSWs in this setting. METHODS: PSWs will lead a typical informal peer support group within the larger context of online peer support groups, focusing on personal-civic recovery. They will be scripted with a fixed, predetermined duration (a series of 10 weekly 90-minute online workshops). There will be 2 experimental subgroups-patients diagnosed with (1) psychotic disorders (n=10) and (2) anxiety or mood disorders (n=10)-compared to a control group (n=10). Random assignment to the intervention and control arms will be conducted using a 2:1 ratio. Several instruments will be used to assess clinical recovery (eg, the Recovery Assessment Scale, the Citizenship Measure questionnaire). The COVID-19 Stress Scales will be used to assess effects in terms of clinical recovery and stress- or anxiety-related responses to COVID-19. Changes will be compared between groups from baseline to endpoint in the intervention and control groups using the Student paired sample t test. RESULTS: This pilot study was funded in March 2020. The protocol was approved on June 16, 2020, by the Research Ethics Committees of the Montreal Mental Health University Institute. Recruitment took place during the months of July and August, and results are expected in December 2020. CONCLUSIONS: Study results will provide reliable evidence on the effectiveness of a web-based intervention provided by PSWs. The investigators, alongside key decision makers and patient partners, will ensure knowledge translation throughout, and our massive open online course (MOOC), The Fundamentals of Recovery, will be updated with the evidence and new knowledge generated by this feasibility study. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04445324; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04445324. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): PRR1-10.2196/22500.
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Several instruments have been developed by clinicians and academics to assess clinical recovery. Based on their life narratives, measurement tools have also been developed and validated through participatory research programs by persons living with mental health problems or illnesses to assess personal recovery. The main objective of this project is to explore possible correlations between clinical recovery, personal recovery, and citizenship by using patient-reported outcome measures. All study participants are currently being treated and monitored after having been diagnosed either with (a) psychotic disorders or (b) anxiety and mood disorders. They have completed questionnaires for clinical evaluation purposes (clinical recovery) will further complete the Recovery Assessment Scale and Citizenship Measure (personal-civic recovery composite index). Descriptive and statistical analyses will be performed to determine internal consistency for each of the subscales, and assess convergent-concurrent validity between clinical recovery, citizenship and personal recovery. Recovery-oriented mental health care and services are particularly recognizable by the presence of Peer Support Workers, who are persons with lived experience of recovery. Upon training, they can personify personalized mental health care and services, that is to say services that are centered on the person's recovery project and not only on their symptoms. Data from our overall research strategy will lay the ground for the evaluation of the effects of the intervention of Peer Support Workers on clinical recovery, citizenship and personal recovery.
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OBJECTIVES: To lay the groundwork for the arrival of Recovery Mentors (RMs) in some of its multidisciplinary teams, a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) conference was organized in a large public agency in the province of Quebec, Canada. The aim was to come up collectively with recommendations to improve access to recovery-oriented care and services for this vulnerable population by recognizing the epistemic value of their lived experience. METHODS: A series of workshops were organized among health professionals to reflect on their practice and to discuss the role of RMs for improving epistemic equity and recognition of the experiential knowledge. In preparation for these workshops participants completed the Recovery Self-Assessment (RSA). The RSA is a 32-item questionnaire designed to gauge the degree to which programs implement recovery-oriented practices, which should notably include RMs in multidisciplinary teams (five-point Likert scale: 1= strongly disagree ; 5 = strongly agree). The interactive workshops were hosted by RMs as trainers who first shared their lived experience and understanding of recovery. RESULTS: Eighty-height of the 105 participants completed the RSA. The highest score on the RSA was for the item Staff believe in the ability of program participants to recover (mean = 4.2/5). The lowest score was for the item People in recovery are encouraged to attend agency advisory boards and management meetings (mean = 2.2/5). Based on the average inter-item correlation, a reliability test confirmed an excellent internal consistency for the French RSA scale, with a Cronbach's Alpha of .9. Means and standard deviation for each item of the RSA questionnaires were calculated. The results did not differ by participant characteristics. Results to the RSA and results from the workshops that were co-hosted by RMs were reported in the plenary session and further discussed. The workshops, the RSA and the whole CPD conference raised awareness among health professionals about stigmatizing attitudes and epistemic inequity in actual service provision. CONCLUSION: RMs could be invited to actively participate and attend advisory boards and management meetings more frequently and on a more regular basis for ongoing quality improvement towards better access to recovery-oriented practices. This CPD conference has shown the acceptability and feasibility of including RMs as trainers for better recognition of the epistemic value of the experiential knowledge of recovery. They can help health professionals to recognize and better appreciate service users as knowers and potential contributors to knowledge.
