Pilot Study: Assessing Personal and Clinical Impacts from a Recovery-Centric Intervention in Inpatient Psychiatry Using Mixed Methods

Objective: The conventional model of biomedical mental healthcare focused on diagnosis, crisis stabilization, and pharmaceutical treatment might be enriched with recovery-oriented programming and improve the overall inpatient experience. This study aimed to assess the impacts of a person-centered intervention on patient-reported recovery measures and clinical progression over time. Methods: Eighteen patients from a tertiary-level regional unit enrolled in the pilot program over an eight-month intervention period. Clinical and proxy recovery data was collected and compared before and after the intervention in a combination of within group and between group assessments using unit clinical performance as a control. Results: Contrary to expectation, intervention participants reported a decline in four of five proxy recovery scores from the pretest to the post-test and concurrent deterioration in routine clinical monitoring scores. Research cohort scores declined in three of six domains with a statistically significant change in one category while unit clinical scores declined in five of six domains with statistically significant changes in three categories. A comparison of mean coefficients indicated more favourable outcomes for research participants in five clinical domains. Conclusions: Concurrent declines in recovery-focused and clinical measures suggest a risk of inpatient regression over time in hospital. The findings support the need for innovative approaches to inpatient service delivery including recovery-focused interventions which might improve clinical progression. The results also indicate the need for rigorous program evaluation which can be facilitated by leveraging existing clinical assessment tools and in considering patient perspectives in determining the effectiveness of interventions.