“You can’t un-ring the bell”: a mixed methods approach to understanding veteran and family perspectives of recovery from military-related posttraumatic stress disorder

BACKGROUND: Military-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a complex diagnosis with non-linear trajectories of coping and recovery. Current approaches to the evaluation of PTSD and treatment discontinuation often rely on biomedical models that dichotomize recovery based on symptom thresholds. This approach may not sufficiently capture the complex lived experiences of Veterans and their families. To explore conceptualizations of recovery, we sought perspectives from Veterans and their partners in a pilot study to understand: 1) how Veterans nearing completion of treatment for military-related PTSD and their partners view recovery; and 2) the experience of progressing through treatment towards recovery. METHODS: We employed a concurrent mixed methods design. Nine Veterans nearing the end of their treatment at a specialized outpatient mental health clinic completed quantitative self-report tools assessing PTSD and depressive symptom severity, and an individual, semi-structured interview assessing views on their treatment and recovery processes. Veterans’ partners participated in a separate interview to capture views of their partners’ treatment and recovery processes. Descriptive analyses of self-report symptom severity data were interpreted alongside emergent themes arising from inductive content analysis of qualitative interviews. RESULTS: While over half of Veterans were considered “recovered” based on quantitative assessments of symptoms, individual reflections of “recovery” were not always aligned with these quantitative assessments. A persistent narrative highlighted by participants was that recovery from military-related PTSD was not viewed as a binary outcome (i.e., recovered vs. not recovered); rather, recovery was seen as a dynamic, non-linear process. Key components of the recovery process identified by participants included a positive therapeutic relationship, social support networks, and a toolkit of adaptive strategies to address PTSD symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: For participants in our study, recovery was seen as the ability to navigate ongoing issues of symptom management, re-engagement with meaningful roles and social networks, and a readiness for discontinuing intensive, specialized mental health treatment. The findings of this study highlight important considerations in balancing the practical utility of symptom severity assessments with a better understanding of the treatment discontinuation-related needs of Veterans with military-related PTSD and their families, which align with a contemporary biopsychosocial approach to recovery. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-021-03622-3.