Review: Young people's recovery processes from mental health problems – a scoping review

Abstract

Background: Recovery from mental illness and mental health problems is relatively well-researched among adults, but evidence that focuses on the recovery experiences of young people and what characterizes it is scarce. With this in mind, this article aims to map out the existing research in order to identify prevailing knowledge about the recovery of young people between the ages of 12 and 25. Method: Drawing on scoping review methodology, this article is based on an analysis of 33 articles conducted in the USA, Australia, and Europe. Results: Our findings reveal that young people express both similar and divergent lines of reasoning about recovery compared with adults. Our findings also indicate that young people often fluctuate in the way they view recovery, and that they thus tend to be ambivalent about what recovery means. Parents usually highlight the importance of professionals facilitating recovery, while care staff problematize the organizational frameworks available as aggravating circumstances for implementing personal recovery. Young people, parents, and care staff consistently describe recovery as a way to, despite lingering problems, enable a satisfying life. Conclusions: Through this review, we outline the need for a more distinct focus on agency and participation in young people's recovery processes, at the same time as family involvement needs to be further investigated and operationalized. Key Practitioner Message• Recovery theory is a prevalent model of mental health. Though recovery itself remains a core component in mental health literature, it is seldom found in child and adolescent psychiatry. • Agency and participation are suggested as important factors to attend to for practitioners working with young people's mental health. • The family's involvement in the recovery process seems to be unclear, meaning that more attention is needed as to how families become significant and what is considered to contribute to recovery within the immediate network. • To make the recovery process more concrete, further research on young people's recovery is needed and especially their subjective experiences of it.

Staff’s experiences of implementing patient-initiated brief admission for adolescents from the perspective of epistemic (in)justice

“…( 13 )] that includes parents. Part of the recovery research on young people is about how care can be optimized and developed to best facilitate a recovery-oriented approach ( 33 , 37 ). Here, a “youth-friendly” perspective ( 35 , 36 ) is argued to be established in an overall biomedically dominated range of care, where PIBA has the potential to realize this view as well as becoming an extension of young people’s right to agency and participation ( 1 , 3 – 5 , 34 , 38 ).…”

“…This developmental process usually includes aspects of ambivalence and uncertainty that need to be taken seriously in young people’s encounters with care [cf. ( 37 )].…”

“…In adult psychiatry, research shows coherent results regarding increased satisfaction and agency, fewer care days, increased suicide prevention work, reduced coercion in inpatient care and an improved care climate ( 29 – 32 ). These patterns of overall increased patient benefits may correlate with a recovery-oriented and person-centered approach ( 33 – 37 ). During the autumn of 2019, a political decision was made to implement PIBA in CAP in Stockholm with the ambition of increasing patient participation and agency among adolescents.…”

‘The Great Oblivion’—An Autoethnographic Depiction of Social and Personal Recovery After Electro-convulsive Therapy (ECT)

“…With this in mind, the autoethnographic method seemed relevant in this endeavour and in this article, memories from and meetings with certain key people from various institutions are woven together with diary and journal entries from the period between 2007-2009 as well as theoretical thinking linked to my academic journey during the years of 2019-2021 when I went from being a master's student to PhD student in social work. Also, since I myself research recovery from mental health problems (Moberg et al, 2022), aspects of recovery (Leamy et al, 2011;Tew et al, 2012) become important elements when reasoning about my own process. However, when describing this self-experienced journey, it requires reflexivity and the ability for philosophical reasoning (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992).…”

Editorial: Primum non nocere – are adverse events accurately reported in studies on psychological interventions for children?

“…For example, in the case of an adolescent who becomes more self‐assertive towards parents following psychological therapy, self‐assertiveness may be deemed as negative by parents but welcomed by the adolescent themselves. This reasoning is also related to the subjective concept of recovery, which is a core element of psychological interventions, covered in this issue by the study by Moberg, Skogens, and Schön (2023).…”