Recovery-Oriented Practices in a Mental Health Centre for Citizens Experiencing Serious Mental Issues and Substance Use: As Perceived by Healthcare Professionals

Introduction: Recovery-oriented practices have become a means of promoting user recovery during hospitalisation, but we do not know much about the concrete means of practicing recovery-orientation for the most vulnerable users with serious mental difficulty and substance use. Aims: We investigated the concrete means of practicing recovery-orientation in care work and the elements, dimensions, outcomes, or steps of it in a special department of mental health centres. Method: Focus group interviews were conducted with 16 health professionals with experience with users with serious mental difficulty and substance use. Qualitative content analysis was undertaken. Results: The main theme was “holistic recovery on structural terms” based on two themes and four subthemes. The first theme was “recovery based on an individual approach” with subthemes “detective—find hope” and “how to do recovery-oriented practice”. The next theme was “recovery subject to structural framework” with subthemes “tension between different interests” and “symptoms as a barrier”. Conclusions: recovery-oriented practice is understood as an approach where health professionals emphasise forming relationships based on trust, being hopeful for the users’ future, spending time with users, and respecting users’ experiences and knowledge from their own life. There are cross-pressures between different interests. The desire to meet the users’ perspectives and respect these perspectives but at the same time live up to mental health centre purposes to stabilise the users’ health and achieve self-care.