Personal storytelling in mental health recovery

Abstract

Purpose: Creating more positive individual narratives around illness and identity is at the heart of the mental health care recovery movement. Some recovery services explicitly use personal storytelling as an intervention. This paper looks at individual experiences of a personal storytelling intervention, a recovery college Telling My Story course.Design/methodology/approach: Eight participants who had attended the Telling My Story course offered at a UK recovery college were interviewed. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.Findings: Five key themes emerged: a highly emotional experience, feeling safe to disclose, renewed sense of self, two-way process and a novel opportunity. Originality/value:The findings suggest that storytelling can be a highly meaningful experience and an important part of the individual's recovery journey. They also begin to identify elements of the storytelling process which might aid recovery, and point to pragmatic setting conditions for storytelling interventions to be helpful. More time could be dedicated to individuals telling their story within UK mental health services, and we can use this insight into the experience of personal storytelling to guide any future developments.

Not the story you want? Assessing the fit of a conceptual framework characterising mental health recovery narratives

“…This could be expanded to include prompts based on the typology, demonstrating to service users that multiple types of recovery story are equally possible and valid. Courses [6] and guidance [7,8] on developing one's recovery story are widely offered by recovery-based services. However, concerns have been raised that these could lead to the emergence of "dominant recovery narratives" at the expense of other types of experience [6].…”

“…Courses [6] and guidance [7,8] on developing one's recovery story are widely offered by recovery-based services. However, concerns have been raised that these could lead to the emergence of "dominant recovery narratives" at the expense of other types of experience [6]. Narrow interpretations of recovery narratives may be operationalised for organisational rather than individual benefit [39], whether by mental health services, charities and campaigns, which may promote narratives of returns to productivity via treatment and medication, or by activist movements, which may promote narratives of rejecting medication and finding the tools to cope with trauma without drugs [41].…”

“…They have been described as a "key recovery technology" [2], central to the recovery approach within mental health policy and practice [3,4]. Interventions have been developed to support individuals to write [5] and tell [6] their own stories, and guidelines on sharing recovery narratives have been produced [7][8][9]. The recovery narratives of others have been used as a resource by practitioners [10], online mental health interventions [11] and anti-stigma campaigns [12].…”

“…The recovery narratives of others have been used as a resource by practitioners [10], online mental health interventions [11] and anti-stigma campaigns [12]. For recipients, recovery narratives can provide personal inspiration [6], authenticate difficult personal experiences [11] or mitigate social isolation [13]. They can also contribute to distress, e.g.…”

Pilot study of a serious board game intervention to facilitate narrative identity reconstruction in mental health recovery

“…recovery stories aligned with a positive identity is central to mental health recovery (Llewellyn-Beardsley et al, 2019;Nurser et al, 2018).…”