Measuring personal recovery in people with bipolar disorder and exploring its relationship with well‐being and social role participation

The relevance of personal recovery receives increasing attention in mental health care and is also important for people with bipolar disorder (BD). There is a need for reliable and valid instruments measuring personal recovery. Therefore, the current study evaluated the psychometric properties of a Dutch translation of the Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery (QPR) in a sample of people with BD and explored the relationship with constructs of well‐being, social role participation, and psychopathology. A cross‐sectional survey study was conducted in which 102 people diagnosed with BD completed the QPR. Factor structure of the QPR was evaluated by conducting confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), and internal consistency was assessed by calculating reliability coefficients. Convergent validation measures assessed well‐being, social role participation, and symptomatology. Incremental validity was determined by evaluating the ability of the QPR to explain variance in symptomatology above and beyond well‐being. Findings of the CFA supported a unidimensional factor structure, and internal consistency estimates were excellent. Scores of the QPR showed strong correlations with convergent measures, but were only weakly associated with manic symptomatology. Moreover, personal recovery explained additional variance in symptoms of depression and anxiety above and beyond well‐being, indicating incremental validity. The QPR appears to be a reliable and valid tool to assess personal recovery in people with BD. Our findings underline the importance of personal recovery in the context of treatment of BD. Personal recovery demonstrates a substantial overlap with well‐being.