Recovery Identity and Psychosocial-Spiritual Health: A Survey of Individuals in Remission From Substance Use Disorders

Abstract

Recovery identity – the degree to which someone identifies as “in recovery” from a substance use disorder – has been shown to be associated with a host of positive health outcomes. The purpose of the present study was to test the association between recovery identity, quality of life, spiritual well-being, and relational health in a sample of individuals in remission from moderate or severe SUDs recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform ( n = 494). Results indicated that the presence of a recovery identity was significantly associated with greater spiritual health, but not significantly associated with psychological, social, or environmental quality of life, nor with family functioning. Results have important implications for understanding paths to recovery and important correlates of health outcomes.