A Qualitative Exploration of U.K. Prisoners’ Experiences of Substance Misuse and Mental Health Difficulties, and the Breaking Free Health and Justice Interventions

Elison, Sarah; Weston, Samantha; Dugdale, Stephanie; Ward, Jonathan; Davies, Glyn

doi:10.1177/0022042616630013

Cited by 11 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Previous studies of first-person accounts of recovery from co-existing difficulties have found that recovery is experienced as a personal journey towards a new identity. This may involve expressing and revising stories of early experience (Elison, Weston, Dugdale, Ward, & Davies, 2016); unravelling painful life events (Brekke, Lien, Davidson, & Biong, 2017a), and taking responsibility for past choices (Hipolito, Carpenter-Song, & Whitley, 2011). Some studies found that people experience a new sense of meaning which may have a spiritual dimension (Whitley, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narratives of recovery in people with coexisting mental health and alcohol misuse difficulties

Stott

Priest

2018

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Purpose: Existing literature has examined what recovery means to people with co-occurring difficulties, but does little to examine experiences of recovery as a process. This paper uses a narrative approach to explore the process of recovery as an individual journey in a social context. It focusses on people who use alcohol in order to explore the impact of alcohol's specific cultural meanings on the recovery journey.Purpose: People with coexisting mental health and alcohol misuse difficulties face multiple disadvantages. The concept of recovery has become important for policy and practice in both mental health and alcohol misuse services. However, the recovery narratives of this population are under-represented in the literature. Methodology:Ten interviews with people with coexisting mental health and alcohol misuse difficulties were conducted, audio-recorded, and transcribed. The transcriptions were analysed using narrative analysis. Practical implications:The value placed on professionals having specialised therapeutic skills in working with trauma highlights the need for training in this area. The role for practical and material support underlines the importance of multi-agency working.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narratives of recovery in people with coexisting mental health and alcohol misuse difficulties

Stott

Priest

2018

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“…As only the first 5 items of the WHOQoL-BREF are being used, reliability and validity analyses will be conducted on data generated from these 5 items. Internal reliability which will be examined using Cronbach’s alpha, and concurrent validity will be examined by correlating scores on the 5 WHOQoL-BREF items against scores on the other measures included in the study measuring constructs related to quality of life.Biopsychosocial functioning: This will be measured using the Recovery Progression Measure (RPM; Elison et al 2016a, b; Elison et al 2017a, b, c, d), which is a 36-item measure comprising 6 ‘impact slider’, 11-point Likert scale items each measuring level of severity of impairment in the following 6 domains of functioning; difficult situations, negative thoughts, emotions, unhelpful behaviors, physical sensations, lifestyle. In addition, the RPM contains 30 dichotomous ‘yes/no’ response items measuring presence or absence of specific biopsychosocial issues within each of the 6 domains.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, BFO has become the first healthcare program to be included on VC, and the first digital intervention for offenders to be accredited by the UK Ministry of Justice, Correctional Services Advice and Accreditation Panel. Mixed-methods research conducted by the authors explored both the barriers and facilitators of implementation of BFO in prison settings (Elison et al 2015c; Elison et al 2016b), and examined clinical outcomes for offenders accessing the program as part of the ‘Gateways’ through-care initiative (Elison et al 2015c; Davies et al 2017), which aimed to support substance-involved offenders as they transition back to the community.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protocol for a randomized controlled trial of the Breaking Free Online Health and Justice program for substance misuse in prison settings

Elison-Davies¹,

Davies²,

Ward³

et al. 2018

Health Justice

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BackgroundSubstance misuse, including problematic drug and alcohol use, are significant issues in society that can have multiple detrimental effects. Many people access support for their substance misuse during prison sentences, due to the associations between substance misuse and offending, and the high proportion of the prison population who have drug and alcohol issues. Breaking Free Online Health and Justice is a computer-assisted therapy program that has been developed to support substance-involved offenders to address their substance misuse and associated offending within prison settings.MethodsThis will be a parallel-group randomized controlled trial of 4-week Breaking Free Online Health and Justice program as an adjunct to standard treatment for substance misuse, in comparison to standard treatment only, in a male Category D open prison. Interventional and control groups will be compared in terms of the changes in their scores on multiple measures from baseline to post-treatment assessment at 4-weeks, and then 3- and 6-months follow-up. Participants will be adult male offenders serving sentences in prison in England who have demonstrable difficulties with drugs and/or alcohol for at least the past 12-months. The primary outcome measure will be self-reported substance misuse, with secondary outcomes being standardized psychometric assessments of substance dependence, mental health, biopsychosocial functioning, quality of life and post-release offending. Other secondary measures will include frequency of completion of specific intervention strategies in the program.DiscussionThis study will examine whether Breaking Free Online Health and Justice as an adjunct to standard substance misuse interventions in prisons, improves outcomes for substance-involved offenders receiving interventions in custodial settings. Findings from the study will be used to inform further developments of the program and potential improvements to custodial treatment.Trials registrationISRCTN09846981.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40352-018-0078-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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“…Having a social network that believes in the person and accepts them as they are, is important (Pallaveshi et al 2013;Roush et al 2015) and in this sense self-help groups can be vital (Laudet et al 2000). The fundamental importance of relatively decent living conditions in terms of housing and financial security is stressed in some studies (Brekke et al 2017;Elison et al 2016) but is surprisingly rarely mentioned within the field of co-occurring AOD and mental health problems, conceivably because of its basic character.…”

Section: Treatment-related Factors Among Marginalized Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting recovery in social work with persons having co-occurring problems – clients’ and professionals’ perceptions

Greiff

Skogens

Topor

2018

Nordic Social Work Research

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The study focus on how clients with co-occurring problems describe the importance of treatment factors for the recovery process and how these descriptions relates to professional descriptions. 40 client interviews and 15 interviews with professionals were conducted. Three major themes emerge in the results: medication, methods and the professionals.The amount of contact with psychiatry and social services that these clients often have through the years can lead to a 'learned passivity' towards their own recovery process. Thus, an important task for the professionals is to break through passivity and isolation. This can be done by treating the client like an 'ordinary fellow human'. Besides the actual professional tasks, small things seem to be important; greeting the person, paying respect when entering some one's home, etc.When a social network is missing, the professional can sometime fill this gap, but if this is to promote recovery, it seem important that the professional social network is used as a bridge to other social networks.The professionals as a group, including the environment, emerge as important. Accordingly, to be supportive as a group, and be able to act like 'social role models', the professionals need to have working alliances also between themselves. The environment can also offer tools that can be used for socialization that interfere with the 'learned passivity' and instead includes and respects the client. This, together with the results highlighting the importance of creating safe milieus, confident and secure professionals, puts focus on how the professional work is organized.

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A Qualitative Exploration of U.K. Prisoners’ Experiences of Substance Misuse and Mental Health Difficulties, and the Breaking Free Health and Justice Interventions

Cited by 11 publications

References 65 publications

Narratives of recovery in people with coexisting mental health and alcohol misuse difficulties

Narratives of recovery in people with coexisting mental health and alcohol misuse difficulties

Protocol for a randomized controlled trial of the Breaking Free Online Health and Justice program for substance misuse in prison settings

Supporting recovery in social work with persons having co-occurring problems – clients’ and professionals’ perceptions

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