Chapter 4 98 recent meta-analysis showed that the association between clinical and personal recovery is small to medium, and that personal recovery was explained only partly by symptom severity. The same meta-analysis concluded that treatment and outcome monitoring of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders should pay attention separately to clinical and personal recovery (8). Our results underscore the clinical relevance of interventions aiming to improve coping skills as a means of promoting progress in clinical, functional, and personal recovery, such as those in the IMR-modules “Coping with stress” and “Coping with problems and persistent symptoms”. And our findings also confirm the relevance of interventions that focus on improving social support in order to promote progress in functional recovery, the IMR-module “Building social support” being one such intervention. Strengths/Limitations The strengths of the study include a large sample size, a broad range of measures– including those addressing the components of recovery–and analyses that comprise a more comprehensive understanding of predictors of recovery. As, in their view, recovery models and frameworks are founded mainly on qualitative studies and expert opinion, Slade et al. have indicated an evidence gap (5). Such a gap might be bridged by our study, which is based on the conceptual framework of IMR, uses quantitative data from standardized recovery measures, and aims explicitly to explore the determinants of clinical, functional and personal recovery. And although most of our study population consisted of people with psychotic disorders, our inclusion of patients with other serious mental illnesses contributes to generalizability in this domain, and also to external validity. Our study also has various limitations. First, although coping and personal recovery are different theoretical concepts, they may have some overlap. However, the content of most of the CSES items is different from that of the MHRM items, especially regarding the items of the two largest subscales of the CSES, (1) Use problem-focused coping and (2) Stop unpleasant emotions and thoughts. Secondly: due to our use of specific definitions and operationalization’s of the three differentiated types of recovery, the generalizability of our results is limited in concepts of recovery that have been defined otherwise.
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