25th January 2024
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Personal stories of overcoming mental illness can help others, study finds
Participants who were given access to a databank of personal stories of mental health recovery showed improvements in their own mental health
"Our key findings were that the NEON Intervention improves quality of life and meaning in life, and is cost-effective enough that it can be recommended for use within the NHS. We’re very excited about the potential for new approaches to supporting recovery which use this lived experience of what it’s actually like to live with, and live well with, mental health problems.” Mike Slade, professor of mental health recovery and social inclusion, University of Nottingham
Personal accounts of how people have overcome their struggles with mental illness are effective at helping others with similar experiences to improve their quality of life, a study has found.
The University of Nottingham’s NEON study, published in World Psychiatry, is the first mental health trial in the world to investigate the value of sharing personal stories about mental health recovery. The study also found the method was a cost-effective treatment option for the NHS.
To assess the effectiveness of sharing first-hand experiences of recovery, the Nottingham researchers developed the Narratives Experiences Online (NEON) intervention, a web application that collected more than 600 recorded mental health recovery narratives.
They then looked at whether access to NEON benefited adults experiencing non-psychotic mental health problems. Participants’ quality of life was assessed 52 weeks after signing up for the trial, using the Manchester Short Assessment.
The study recruited 1,023 participants from across England, with mental health problems such as mood, anxiety or stress-related disorders.
Changes were small, but meaningful
Half of the participants were given immediate access to a collection of mental health recovery narratives, through the NEON Intervention. The other half were given access to the NEON Intervention 52 weeks after signing up for the trial. The team collected information about the participants using online questionnaires, both when they first signed up for the trial, and after 52 weeks. This allowed the team to identify any changes that occurred as a result of receiving immediate access to the NEON Intervention.
The results showed that people who received immediate access to the NEON Intervention experienced an improvement in their quality of life after 52 weeks, and an increased perception that their life had meaning. Both changes were small, but still meaningful. The researchers say that, because it is easy for participants to access the NEON intervention independently, with few needing technical support, it would be relatively easy to scale up the intervention. “The relatively small increase in quality of life at the individual level is likely to produce a substantial mental health impact if the NEON Intervention is provided at population level,” they write. They also argue that “population‐scale deployment of the intervention may lead to a virtuous circle of narrative donation, with each donation increasing the diversity of mental health experiences present in the collection.”
Cost-effective for those already using NHS services
For trial participants who were already using NHS mental health services, the NEON Intervention was particularly cost-effective, the researchers found, because it meant participants could spend less time with psychologists or psychiatrists.
Mike Slade, professor of mental health recovery and social inclusion at Nottingham and lead author on the study, said: “Our England-wide study found that personal accounts of recovery recorded by people with mental health problems can improve the lives of others with similar experiences. Our key findings were that the NEON Intervention improves quality of life and meaning in life, and is cost-effective enough that it can be recommended for use within the NHS. We’re very excited about the potential for new approaches to supporting recovery which use this lived experience of what it’s actually like to live with, and live well with, mental health problems.”
Dr Stefan Rennick-Eggleston, a mental health researcher at the university and one of the co-authors, said: “As an important part of our study, we looked at the impact of the NEON Intervention on people who had used or never used NHS mental health services. Whilst the NEON Intervention provided cost-effective benefits for all, it was particularly cost-effective for people currently using NHS mental health services, to the extent that introducing the NEON Intervention reduced NHS resource use.
The study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
FCC Insight
Peer support has already shown to be effective in helping people with mental health conditions, because it helps to know that others have struggled with and overcome similar problems. Reading other people’s stories of mental health recovery is a low-key and low-cost version of the same idea. The Nottingham study showed that, as an intervention, it has clear, though modest, benefits. The advantage to the NHS is that the financial cost is negligible. Sharing narratives of recovery will never replace interventions such as counselling, but this study shows that they are a potentially useful means of aiding recovery through self-help.
