Recovery Camp: Assisting consumers toward enhanced self-determination

Area of Science:

• Mental Health
• Recreation Therapy
• Community Reintegration

Background:

• Mental health consumers often experience social isolation and lack leisure skills crucial for community integration.
• Therapeutic Recreation (TR) is an underutilized treatment modality in Australian healthcare despite its North American success.
• A novel TR program, Recovery Camp, was developed to engage consumers and health professionals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of a Therapeutic Recreation program on the self-determination of individuals with mental illness.
• To assess the effectiveness of the Recovery Camp model in fostering community and recovery.
• To examine changes in self-awareness and perceived choice among participants.

Main Methods:

• A 2x3 quasi-experimental design comparing a camp group with a control group.
• Involved 28 adult mental health consumers over a five-day Recovery Camp.
• Utilized diverse experiential recreation activities focused on engagement, therapeutic relationships, and teamwork.

Main Results:

• Recovery Camp participants reported increased self-awareness and perceived choice immediately post-camp compared to the control group.
• Self-awareness remained significantly higher in the camp group at three-month follow-up.
• No significant difference in perceived choice was observed between groups at the three-month follow-up.

Conclusions:

• Therapeutic Recreation programs like Recovery Camp can positively influence mental health consumers' self-awareness.
• The study supports the integration of recreation within a recovery framework to promote health behavior change.
• Recovery Camp demonstrates a viable model for community-based, recovery-oriented mental health care.