The Recovery Programme

The Recovery Programme is a five-year programme of research into understanding and promoting recovery from psychosis, in a manner that is acceptable to and empowering of service users. The Recovery programme aims to produce: User-defined measures of psychotic experiences. Several therapy manuals suitable for dissemination to multidisciplinary teams. New evidence-based therapies that are acceptable to service users. Guides for promoting recovery and models of collaborative provision of services to people with psychosis. Information regarding service user preference The Recovery programme is funded by The National Institute of Health Research (NIHR). We have had ongoing support from The Mental Health Research Network (MHRN) as all studies have been adopted by them. Academics involved in the Programme are based at the Universities of Manchester, Lancaster and Bangor.

The Recovery programme consists of 5 streams of research, with each project being led by experts in the field, with the involvement of Service User Researchers. The projects are:

Project 1

A series of studies to develop and measure the usefulness and reliability of a service-user informed measure of symptoms associated with recovery from psychosis. (Prof Gillian Haddock)

Project 2

A series of studies to identify psychological processes of recovery; identify factors that contribute to the stability of recovery over time & identify factors that predict recovery. (Prof Richard Bentall)

Project 3

A series of studies to develop a self-help recovery package; to assess preferences for the self-help therapy; and to evaluate the effectiveness of the self-help therapy.

Project 4

A series of studies to identify the causes of suicidal thinking and behaviour in people with psychosis also develop and evaluate a manual Cognitive Behavioural Suicide Prevention for Psychosis (CBSPp). (Prof Nick Tarrier)

Project 5

A series of studies to develop a self-report measure of recovery from bipolar disorder and the development and evaluation of individual recovery-focused CBT for early bipolar disorder (Prof Steve Jones).

For more information about the Recovery Programme please contact Heather Law on 0161 772 4642 or email heather.law@gmw.nhs.uk.

For a summary of the findings from this programme of research, please see the NIHR Journals Library