Understanding Recovery Colleges Through Partaker Narratives: Qualitative Diary-Interview Study

Background: Recovery colleges (RCs) facilitate peer-supported learning communities where people experiencing mental disruption work on recovery. How recovery processes unfold, especially within RCs, remains insufficiently understood. Objective: Using a narrative approach, this study scrutinized how recovery processes unfold for RC partakers within RCs and in their everyday lives, and what RC attendance means in those processes. Methods: This study's design, recruitment, data collection, analysis, and manuscript drafting were co-created with experiential researchers (ie, RC partakers). Following an interview study (N=26), a diary-interview study was conducted (N=5) between November 2022 and January 2023. RC partakers completed qualitative diaries for 1 or 2 months, every other day, and reflected on this diary period in an evaluative interview (conducted by an academic and an experiential researcher). Recovery narratives of 3 diary participants (Emma, Robin, and Norah) are presented. Results: For Emma, peer-to-peer contact within the RC helps rebuild a supportive social network and stimulates her to face her anxieties. Robin described how RC attendance offers new perspectives, invites her to trust her own judgments, and reconsider possibilities such as paid employment. Norah's narrative illustrates how RC partaking in various capacities supported a shift in her identity from feeling like a failure to seeing herself as a valuable contributor. Considering all narratives, a cross-case analysis foregrounded the value of experiential knowledge in the recovery processes of the RC partakers. Two mutually reinforcing learning processes were identified: learning by exchanging and learning by doing. It also became clear that the RC explicitly facilitated contexts in which these processes can unfold, as partakers experienced recognition, inspiration, hope, perspective, supportive structures, and social safety. Experiences stemmed from learning processes and acted as catalysts for further learning. Importantly, these processes were not linear: partakers also experienced challenges in their everyday lives and within the RC. Conclusions: Our findings underscore the value of RCs in landscapes of mental care and support as they explicitly facilitate space for exchanging experiences among peers and experimenting with new behaviors. We illustrate the importance of investigating supportive processes and contexts to understand how recovery unfolds. We also present practical implications for RC offerings and participatory health initiatives more broadly.