Recovery in Austria: Mental health trialogue

Abstract

The active involvement of service users and relatives and friends is essential for the development of recovery-orientated mental health practice and research. However, accepting each other as equally entitled experts is still a challenge. In trialogue groups users, carers and friends and mental health workers meet regularly in an open forum that is located on 'neutral terrain' - outside any therapeutic, familial or institutional context - with the aim of discussing the experiences and consequences of mental health problems and ways forward. Trialogues offer new possibilities for gaining knowledge and insights and developing new ways of communicating beyond role stereotypes. They also function as the basis and starting point for trialogic activities on different levels, e.g. serving on quality control boards or teaching in trialogic teams, and different topics, e.g. a task force on stigma busting or a work group on trauma and psychosis. In German-speaking countries well over a hundred trialogue groups are regularly attended by altogether about 5,000 people. International interest and experiences are growing fast. Trialogues facilitate a discrete and independent form of acquisition and production of knowledge and drive relevant changes in forms of communication as well as in structures.

Embracing Uncertainty to Enable Transformation: The Process of Engaging in Trialogue for Mental Health Communities in Ireland

“…Since then, well over 150 Trialogue Meeting groups have been established in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Turkey, Trinidad, China, US, Toronto UK and Ireland [1415, 1718]. In addition to anecdotal reports from participants that engaging in Trialogue Meetings are positive and transformative experiences [141516, 1819], two small-scale evaluations [2021] and one large-scale national evaluation [22] have demonstrated that Trialogue participation can result in improved outcomes such as lower anxiety and enhanced communication skills. However, in spite of such promising findings, there is a dearth of research on the specific processes involved in participating in Trialogue Meetings in mental health contexts.…”

Understanding ‘recovery’

“…This has resulted in a largely con sistent consensus which has seen recovery explicitly adopted in national policy across England (2001), Ireland (2005 and Scotland (2006), other Anglo phone countries, including New Zealand (1998), the USA (2003), Australia (2003) and Canada (2009), and close engagement in Italy (Davidson 2010b) and Northern Europe (Amering 2009(Amering , 2012. There are some cultural differ ences, and initial explorations in some Asian (Ahmed 2012;Thara 2012) and African (Katontoka 2012; Parker 2012) countries have illustrated variations in non-Western concepts of recovery which emphasise the importance of spirituality and a collective, rather than an individual, identity for health (Slade 2012b).…”

Users’ involvement in mental health services: programme logic model of an innovative initiative in integrated care

“…First, the literature review helped to identify two initiatives that met the research criteria: Trialogues and Mental health forums [6, 32]. Only Trialogues turned out to be relevant to this project.…”

“…Initiated in Germany (where they are known as Psychosis Seminars) and extended to other countries in Europe (Austria, Ireland, etc. ), Trialogues allow groups of 10–60 people to exchange ideas on various topics relating to care experience, recovery, crisis management, and so on [6, 35]. Similar to the CCIU, Trialogues, established in recent years, provide a forum for dialogue between users, carers and mental health workers, outside institutional walls and on an equal footing [6, 33, 34].…”