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The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe first-person experiences of relational recovery in co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions.

Within a phenomenological and collaborative approach, in-depth individual interviews with eight persons with co-occurring conditions were analysed using systematic text condensation.

Participants described interpersonal relationships as both supporting and hindering recovery in fundamental ways. Four categories of experiences of relational recovery were described as follows: choosing one’s child; living with loneliness and a painful past; sacrificing everything for one’s partner; and regaining trust and support.

This paper provides an enhanced understanding of how interpersonal relationships may be experienced by persons who live with co-occurring conditions. The results generally support an understanding of recovery as a relational process.

The importance of collaboration in the mental health field is a well established theoretical principle, but there has so far been less attention to its practical implications from a parents’ perspective. The purpose of this paper is to describe parents’ experiences of collaboration with mental health practitioners.

This was a qualitative study based on thematic analysis of multi-stage focus group discussions with ten parents of young adults with co-occurring mental health and substance use problems.

The authors identified three major themes related to family member’s experiences of collaborative practices: negotiating partnerships, incomprehensible services and being the young adult’s advocate.

A potential limitation of this study is that the parents who agreed to take part in this study were all part of the population who really want to be involved in their relative’s care; other family members who did not take part may have different feelings. It would be interesting to interview the siblings and partners of young adults with mental health and substance abuse problems. A last limitation is that only family parents participated in these focus group discussions; it would be interesting to invite service users and practitioners to elicit information about similarities and differences in their experiences of collaborative practices.

This study emphasises that parents should be seen as unique individuals as well as families. Parents are persons in different contexts. This creates different needs in their collaboration with the professionals. Parents want to be invited to contribute with their experiences and knowledge, being a collaborative partner in the service provision, and not a burden for their young adults, or to the professionals.

This study emphasises that it may be important to understand the complex situations of each family parent, supporting their loved ones and at the same time living lives of their own. Families are in demanding and stressful situations often over many years. They want to be invited to contribute with their experiences and knowledge, being a collaborative partner in the service provision, and not a burden for their young adults, or to the professionals.

The importance of collaboration is well established in in the mental health field. However, there has been less attention to what collaboration with parents might involve in practice. This paper describes the collaborative experiences of parents of young adults (18-28 years) with co-occurring mental health and substance use problems.

Hope is regarded central to recovery in a broad range of health conditions including mental health and substance use problems. Still the phenomenon, along with its implications to research and practice, has gained limited attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore first-person accounts of how practitioners nurture and inspire hope.

This qualitative study is part of a larger action research project. Data were collected using in-depth interviews with eight participants. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed applying thematic analysis.

Hope was perceived as a central phenomenon to practitioners within mental health and substance use services. The following overarching themes were identified through thematic analysis: “Believing in oneself and others,” “Seeing and acknowledging opportunities” and “maneuvering towards hope.”

It seems that there is a need for extending knowledge in how practitioners may inspire hope. In addition there seems to be a need for developing more knowledge on how practitioners’ own hope may be nurtured within a system that is constantly undergoing change and new demands.

Participants considered their own hope as a prerequisite in being able to hope on behalf of others and strategies for inspiring hope were presented on both an individual and system level. Working conditions and challenges within the service system in itself entailed challenges, which at times made nurturing hope difficult. Systems need to embrace flexibility and openness, allowing efforts aimed at inspiring hope to be made. In addition, practitioner’s own hope and the importance of nurturing it, needs to be acknowledged within services. Hope needs to be viewed as a joint venture, in context and in relation to others.

The paper contributes to the knowledge base on hope inspiring practices within a field sometimes associated with challenges and despair. It points out some important preconditions in relation to the challenges practitioners might encounter, both on an individual level and in relation to the service system per se.

Hope is regarded as central to recovery processes. The phenomenon along with its implications for research and practice has, however, gained limited attention within the fields of mental health and substance use. The purpose of this paper is to explore how hope, and what may inspire it, is described within the literature by persons experiencing co-occurring mental health and substance use problems.

The method chosen when conducting this literature review was a scoping study. This allows for a broad approach, aiming to examine research activity and identifying potential gaps within existing literature. Searches were conducted in EMBASE Ovid, PsychINFO Ovid, MEDLINE Ovid, CINAHL Ebsco, SveMed+ and Brithish Nursing Index.

The authors included five articles and one book. None of these presented first-hand experiences of hope and there appears to be a gap in the literature. All included material underlined the importance of the phenomenon to those experiencing co-occurring mental health and substance use problems.

Hope seems as important to people experiencing co-occurring problems as to anyone else. There appears to be a need for further research on how persons experiencing co-occurring problems perceive hope and what may inspire it. Hope and what people hope for take many forms and can arise unexpectedly. Practitioners need to take in account the diversity of the phenomenon and find ways of inspiring hope in collaboration with those in need of support.

The co-occurrence of mental health and substance use problems is prevalent, and has been problematic both in terms of its complexity for the person and of the challenges it poses to health care practitioners. Recovery in co-occurring mental health and substance use problems is viewed as with multiple challenges embedded in it. As most of the existing literature on recovery tends to treat recovery in mental health and substance use problems separately, it is critical to assess the nature of our current understanding of what has been described as “complex” or “dual” recovery. The purpose of this paper is to identify and discuss what persons with co-occurring mental health and substance use problems describe as facilitators and barriers in their recovery process as revealed in the literature.

The method used for this study was a small-scale review of the literature gleaned from a wider general view. Searches were conducted in CINAHL, Psych info, Medline, Embase, SweMed+, and NORART.

Three overarching themes were identified as facilitators of dual recovery: first, meaningful everyday life; second, focus on strengths and future orientation; and third, re-establishing a social life and supportive relationships. Two overarching themes were identified as barriers to dual recovery: first, lack of tailored help and second, complex systems and uncoordinated services.

The recovery literature mostly focuses on recovery in mental health and substance use problems separately, with less attention being paid in the first-person literature to what helps and what hinders dual recovery.