Bowness Bryher, Begum Samina, Bicknell Sarah, Samuels Lana, Shah Sudhir, Hess Stephanie, Martin Karen, Bark Debbie, Henderson Claire, Lawrence Vanessa
Department of Health Service & Population Research, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College, London, United Kingdom.
SLaM Recovery College, South London and Maudsley National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom.
Front Psychiatry. 2025 Aug 15;16:1607560. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1607560. eCollection 2025.
The benefits of attending Recovery Colleges for mental and social wellbeing are well-documented, but the experiences of family carers (roughly 6-11% of students) are underexplored. Family carers report that attending courses supports their own wellbeing and recovery journeys, but also call for greater recognition and relevant provision from Recovery Colleges.
This Participatory Action Research project was codesigned by a Family Carers Advisory Group, an academic researcher, and staff at a Recovery College in England. We aimed to expand Recovery College provision to promote family carers' wellbeing, by coproducing and coevaluating a creative course exploring self-care. We collected data through online feedback forms, fieldnotes, photographs and participatory reflective sessions, and collaboratively explored the family carers' experiences of the course through inductive reflexive thematic analysis.
Seven family carers enrolled on our three-part online course . They shared photographs of the creative and self-care activities they took part in during the course, and gave feedback about what they found helpful and what could improve. We developed three themes summarizing their learning: 'self-care as a family carer is complex, but there are small steps we can take to create time to nurture ourselves', 'creativity connects family carers with others and ourselves', and 'nurturing a creative mindset for caring'.
This example shows how Participatory Action Research can be an effective approach to designing courses for family carers in a Recovery College. We explore deeper understandings of self-care whilst caring, and the ways creativity can enable this and have wider reaching benefits. Our findings also add to the literature on implementing adult education in practice in Recovery College settings. Finally, we provide some implications for improving courses for family carers and future research.
参加康复学院对心理和社会福祉有益，这一点已有充分记录，但家庭照顾者（约占学生总数的6%-11%）的经历却未得到充分探索。家庭照顾者报告称，参加课程有助于他们自身的福祉和康复之旅，但他们也呼吁康复学院给予更多认可和相关支持。
这个参与式行动研究项目是由一个家庭照顾者咨询小组、一位学术研究人员以及英国一所康复学院的工作人员共同设计的。我们旨在通过共同制作和共同评估一门探索自我照顾的创意课程，扩大康复学院的服务范围，以促进家庭照顾者的福祉。我们通过在线反馈表、实地记录、照片和参与式反思会议收集数据，并通过归纳反思主题分析共同探讨了家庭照顾者对该课程的体验。
七名家庭照顾者报名参加了我们的三部分在线课程。他们分享了在课程中参与的创意和自我照顾活动的照片，并反馈了哪些内容对他们有帮助以及哪些方面可以改进。我们总结出三个主题来概括他们的学习内容：“作为家庭照顾者，自我照顾很复杂，但我们可以采取一些小步骤来创造时间滋养自己”，“创造力将家庭照顾者与他人及我们自己联系起来”，以及“培养关爱他人的创造性思维”。
这个例子展示了参与式行动研究如何能成为为康复学院的家庭照顾者设计课程的有效方法。我们深入探讨了在照顾他人的同时对自我照顾的理解，以及创造力如何促成这一点并带来更广泛的益处。我们的研究结果还为康复学院环境中成人教育实践的文献增添了内容。最后，我们为改进针对家庭照顾者的课程和未来研究提供了一些启示。
