Family Recovery Interventions with Families of Mental Health Service Users: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

Introduction: Recovery has become a catalyst for much organisational and cultural change within mental health services. Recovery involves the service user living the best life of their choice despite the presence of mental health challenges. In contrast, recovery of families remains under-developed with minimal attention given to the unique support families may require in their own recovery journeys. This paper aims to place focus on the topic through a systematic review of the literature into family recovery interventions in mental health; Method and Analysis: A PRISMA compliant systematic review was initiated. It included how the reviewers retrieved and selected studies for the systematic review. It outlined the inclusion/exclusion criteria and how these were further developed through the PICO framework. It also outlined how the reviewers assessed issues of bias and quality, as well as the process of data synthesis; Results: Three studies were included in this review. Each focusing on family recovery interventions across the lifespan: Kidstime to family toolkits to family psychoeducation. The benefits and challenges of each intervention to the family were synthesised along with a list of four family recovery enablers that are vital for the implementation of such family recovery interventions; Discussion/Implications for Practice: The results highlight the paucity of quality literature available for family recovery interventions. All three studies scored poorly in terms of quality, with one particular study (Nagi and Davies 2015) lacking quotations from participants to back up their claims. From this study, a number of actions need to be implemented, specifically around the enablers needed to allow for family recovery interventions to be fully implemented.