Interactions between patients' experiences in mental health treatment and lay social network attitudes toward doctors in recovery from mental illness

Abstract

Research in the area of social networks and health has demonstrated that lay social network members play a critical role in the early stages of the illness career, influencing key decisions and pathways to formal care. Here, we revisit and extend this body of work, examining how the lay social network context can moderate the influence of treatment experiences on recovery outcomes as the illness career unfolds. To achieve this goal, we address two research questions, drawing on a longitudinal sample of people making their initial contact with the mental health treatment system: First, we explore how treatment experiences, lay social network characteristics, and recovery outcomes change over 2 years, beginning with the point of entry into treatment. Second, we examine whether the relationship between perceived treatment experiences and recovery outcomes is contingent on characteristics of the lay network context in which clients are socially embedded, focusing on the network's cultural orientation toward medical professionals. We find that positive treatment interactions facilitate improved self-esteem, mastery, role functioning, recovery optimism, and global functioning when the lay network culture is pro-medical, but largely have null effects on the recovery process when the lay network is more hostile to medical professionals.

Social Support Networks and the Mental Health of Runaway and Homeless Youth

“…The parent project, on which this study is based, operationalized RHY's personal support networks as the number of connections youth perceived to be available across four relationship domains (i.e., family, friends, adults, and professionals) to "talk to" and/or "depend on" regarding important matters. The "important matters" approach to enumerating the number and describing the composition of personal support networks has been used successfully across a wide-range of general social surveys, as well as more specialized studies of mental health (see for example (Marsden 1987;Perry et al 2017;Perry and Pescosolido 2015)). This ego-centered approach to collecting network data typically captures the core supports in a person's life who actively provide various forms of emotional, instrumental, and/or informational support, which are especially important for maintaining mental health and managing stress (Perry et al 2017).…”

“…The "important matters" approach to enumerating the number and describing the composition of personal support networks has been used successfully across a wide-range of general social surveys, as well as more specialized studies of mental health (see for example (Marsden 1987;Perry et al 2017;Perry and Pescosolido 2015)). This ego-centered approach to collecting network data typically captures the core supports in a person's life who actively provide various forms of emotional, instrumental, and/or informational support, which are especially important for maintaining mental health and managing stress (Perry et al 2017). Unfortunately, the practical constraints of administering an omnibus survey to RHY in the field prohibited including detailed questions about the nature or quality of their relationship beyond the number of ties within each relational category.…”

Transitions of women’s substance use recovery networks and 12-month sobriety outcomes

“…Similarly, women with low incomes who drank 6 or more drinks at a time at least once weekly had significantly fewer treatment-related alters in their networks (Davey-Rothwell et al, 2011). The effect of having these positive connections to treatment-related alters may depend on PSN support for treatment and recovery, as found in a social network study of people in mental health treatment (Perry et al, 2017).…”

Sustainable Health and Wellness: Effectiveness of a Drama Therapy Program to Improve the Wellbeing of People Affected by Mental Health Decline

“…Experts are increasingly advocating for psychosocial interventions as a treatment for mental disorders rather than depending solely on medication to alleviate symptoms. The idea is that an integral treatment will increase the strengths of the person in such a way that they will understand and accept their situation, creating and establishing purposes that give meaning and value to their lives [11][12][13], thus improving their functioning and reaching a state of wellbeing [14,15].…”