191 Summary and General discussion 7 important and highly personalized process, which requires a large pool of volunteers with different characteristics (Klug, Toner, Fabisch, & Priebe, 2018; Toner, Hickling, Pinto da Costa, Cassidy, & Priebe, 2018). Moreover, several patients in our study could not be matched in time or satisfactorily. Furthermore, the sustainability of volunteer trajectories could be limited, as some trajectories got interrupted due to personal reasons or occupations of volunteers and because patients moved to a different city. For example, volunteer coaches were unable to visit patients during a (temporary) hospitalization or imprisonment in another city, requiring a larger time-investment. In current times, with citizens participating in a demanding job market, it can be challenging to find enough volunteers who can participate in long-term informal care (Broese van Groenou & de Boer, 2016). Lastly, on caregiver-level we noticed a risk of volunteers becoming discouraged or insecure (chapter 4). Some volunteer coaches expressed feelings of disappointment, as they would have liked to have accomplishedmorewith patients. In addition, the fact that appointments were difficult to schedule or were cancelled caused frustration. These experiences are not surprising, as volunteers are often motivated to participate for altruistic reasons, such as a sense of responsibility to help others and to positively contribute to society, as well as personal growth (Cassidy et al., 2019; Klug et al., 2018; Toner et al., 2018). As mentioned, patients in this research were not always able or willing to develop a relationship with the volunteer coach. Possibly the training and supervision of volunteers who encountered these challenges could have been intensified (van der Tier & Potting, 2015). Noteworthy, most volunteer coaches expressed low expectations and did not report these difficulties. The added value of a social network intervention in forensic psychiatric care An RCT was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the informal social network intervention in addition to usual care. We hypothesized that the additive intervention would improve effects on mental wellbeing, outcomes of psychiatric functioning and criminal recidivism (e.g., hospitalization and criminal behavior), and other relevant treatment outcomes (e.g., social network characteristics and substance use), compared to usual care alone in forensic psychiatric outpatients. Specifically, we hypothesized that the improvement of supportive social networks by trained volunteer coaches would affect treatment outcomes either directly or indirectly, through the improvement of mental wellbeing, resulting in enhanced psychiatric functioning and reduced criminal recidivism in patients (chapter 3).
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