Mental Health Staff Perspectives on Personal Recovery: A Narrative Study on Positive Professional Impact of Recovery-Oriented Care

ObjectivesMental health staff play an important role in facilitating personal recovery. We examined how mental health staff perceived personal recovery and the impact of their experience with supporting personal recovery.Research Design and MethodsForty-eight mental health staff wrote a narrative about a service user with severe mental illness that they believed to be in personal recovery and elaborated on the impact of this professional experience. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to illuminate 1) conceptualizations of personal recovery, 2) professional contribution to recovery, and 3) positive impact of recovery-oriented care on staff.ResultsConceptualizations of recovery focused on social connections and positive subjective states, and also symptom remission and illness management. Professional contributions were narrated as encompassing treatment, relationships and conversations as well as time and team collaboration. Impact on the staff included strong positive emotions, professional gains with respect to learning and self-esteem, motivation for and meaning in work as well as belief in recovery.ConclusionsThis latter finding suggests that sharing narratives about service users in personal recovery may increase work pleasure and help reduce burn out in mental health staff

Transfer of gut microbiota from lean and obese mice to antibiotic-treated mice

Transferring gut microbiota from one individual to another may enable researchers to “humanize” the gut of animal models and transfer phenotypes between species. To date, most studies of gut microbiota transfer are performed in germ-free mice. In the studies presented, it was tested whether an antibiotic treatment approach could be used instead. C57BL/6 mice were treated with ampicillin prior to inoculation at weaning or eight weeks of age with gut microbiota from lean or obese donors. The gut microbiota and clinical parameters of the recipients was characterized one and six weeks after inoculation. The results demonstrate, that the donor gut microbiota was introduced, established, and changed the gut microbiota of the recipients. Six weeks after inoculation, the differences persisted, however alteration of the gut microbiota occurred with time within the groups. The clinical parameters of the donor phenotype were partly transmissible from obese to lean mice, in particularly β cell hyperactivity in the obese recipients. Thus, a successful inoculation of gut microbiota was not age dependent in order for the microbes to colonize, and transferring different microbial compositions to conventional antibiotic-treated mice was possible at least for a time period during which the microbiota may permanently modulate important host functions

Mental Health Staff Perspectives on Personal Recovery: A Narrative Study on Positive Professional Impact of Recovery-Oriented Care

Objectives Mental health staff play an important role in facilitating personal recovery. We examined how mental health staff perceived personal recovery and the impact of their experience with supporting personal recovery. Research Design and Methods Forty-eight mental health staff wrote a narrative about a service user with severe mental illness that they believed to be in personal recovery and elaborated on the impact of this professional experience. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to illuminate 1) conceptualizations of personal recovery, 2) professional contribution to recovery, and 3) positive impact of recovery-oriented care on staff. Results Conceptualizations of recovery focused on social connections and positive subjective states, and also symptom remission and illness management. Professional contributions were narrated as encompassing treatment, relationships and conversations as well as time and team collaboration. Impact on the staff included strong positive emotions, professional gains with respect to learning and self-esteem, motivation for and meaning in work as well as belief in recovery. Conclusions This latter finding suggests that sharing narratives about service users in personal recovery may increase work pleasure and help reduce burn out in mental health staff. &nbsp