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How People Can Benefit from Mental Health Consumer‐Run Organizations
Author(s) -
Brown Louis D.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/s10464-009-9233-0
Subject(s) - conceptualization , health psychology , mental health , identification (biology) , psychology , public relations , empirical research , public health , social psychology , applied psychology , sociology , political science , medicine , computer science , nursing , psychotherapist , epistemology , philosophy , botany , artificial intelligence , biology
The goal of this study is to develop a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of the processes by which people can benefit from mental health consumer‐run organizations (CROs). To accomplish this goal, the concept of roles is used to create a preliminary framework that draws connections between several established theoretical explanations. To ground theory development in empirical data, 194 CRO members from 20 CROs answered open‐ended questions about what personal changes occurred as a result of their CRO involvement and what CRO participation experiences enabled personal change. Data analysis led to the identification of 18 personal change categories and 7 experiences that led to change. These categories were integrated into the preliminary theoretical framework, which needed to be extended to accommodate all categories. While inevitably tentative, the final conceptualization provides a more comprehensive understanding of the processes by which people can benefit from CRO participation.