Do recovery-oriented messages improve self-efficacy and positive emotions amongst people with lived experience of psychosis? Experimental investigation.

Objectives: Recovery-oriented perspectives have become accepted worldwide as an alternative to the biomedical approach to conceptualizing and managing severe mental health problems. It has been proposed that one advantage of this is to support self-efficacy amongst people with a lived experience of psychosis, especially when recovery messages are presented by lived experience peers. The aim of the present study was to investigate the proposed psychological benefits of the recovery paradigm, by testing for possible differential impacts of recovery versus biomedical messages on self-efficacy beliefs and positive emotional state amongst people with experience of psychosis.

Contact with recovered peers: buffering disempowering service experiences and promoting personal recovery in serious mental illness.

Background: Mental health patients can experience involuntary treatment as disempowering and stigmatising, and contact with recovered peers is cited as important for countering stigma and fostering agency and autonomy integral to recovery.

Aims: To advance understanding of the interaction between involuntary treatment and contact with recovered peers, and explore hypothesised relationships to mechanisms of self-evaluation relevant to recovery.

Method: Eighty-nine adults diagnosed with serious mental illness completed items to assess involuntary treatment experience and the extent of prior contact with recovered peers, the Internalised Stigma of Mental Illness Scale, the Self-efficacy for Personal Recovery Scale, the Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery and relevant demographic and clinical scales.

Development and validation of a scale for self-efficacy for personal recovery in persisting mental illness.

The personal recovery movement in mental health has emphasised consumers' individual responsibility and autonomy in defining and directing their own recovery journey. Self-efficacy, or an individual's belief that they can achieve their desired outcomes, is likely to be a key predictor of recovery success. However, there is no established measure of self-efficacy for personal recovery.

Randomised controlled trial of a digitally assisted low intensity intervention to promote personal recovery in persisting psychosis: SMART-Therapy study protocol.

Background: Psychosocial interventions have an important role in promoting recovery in people with persisting psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Readily available, digital technology provides a means of developing therapeutic resources for use together by practitioners and mental health service users. As part of the Self-Management and Recovery Technology (SMART) research program, we have developed an online resource providing materials on illness self-management and personal recovery based on the Connectedness-Hope-Identity-Meaning-Empowerment (CHIME) framework.

Out & Online; effectiveness of a tailored online multi-symptom mental health and wellbeing program for same-sex attracted young adults: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Same-sex attracted young adults have been found to experience higher rates of mental health problems and greater difficulties in accessing specialist mental health care services compared to their heterosexual peers. Internet-based mental health interventions have the potential to be more engaging and accessible to young adults compared to those delivered face-to-face. However, they are rarely inclusive of lesbian women and gay men.