"This is not a Life Anyone would want"-A Qualitative Study of Norwegian ACT Service users' Experience with Mental Health Treatment.

We discuss Norwegian service users' experiences with community mental health treatment in general, and the interprofessional Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model in particular. To gain the right to treatment, service users have to accept certain limitations, such as medication and community treatment orders (CTOs). Seventy participants responded to five open-ended questions. In addition, eight of them participated in either focus group or interviews. A collaborative approach, using Stepwise-Deductive Induction (SDI) method was used to analyze the participants' experiences. The results showed that the treatment contributes to an experience of autonomy but also one of restriction. It provides service users with enhanced normalcy, but simultaneously a feeling of deviance. There needs to be an ongoing reflection and discussion about those paradoxes in treatment, and service users have to be involved.

Are Users Satisfied with Assertive Community Treatment in Spite of Personal Restrictions?

The purpose of this explorative study was to examine satisfaction among 70 users of 12 Norwegian Assertive Community Treatment teams. The study was carried out among a group of 70 service users, and reveals generally high levels of satisfaction with the service, with satisfaction also being high in comparison to other ACT satisfaction studies. Users under a Community Treatment Order were more satisfied, while users with an alcohol use disorder were less satisfied. Younger service users were less positive than older users. There was no difference in satisfaction between the genders. This study's positive result may reflect the ACT model's focus on user involvement, recovery and building relationships, and the fact that this service has a more holistic approach than previous services that users have experienced.

Recovery concept in a Norwegian setting to be examined by the assertive community treatment model and mixed methods.

Recovery is a crucial concept in the mental health field. The research of recovery is split into the categories of personal, social and clinical recovery. The purpose of this study was to explore the fragmented concept of recovery in light of assertive community treatment (ACT) in Norway. The study has a mixed methods design with a pragmatic approach. The Questionnaire about the Process of Recovery and open-ended questions posed to 70 participants from 12 ACT teams in Norway, gathered by the "Users interview users" method, are combined with interviews or focus groups with eight of these participants. Surprisingly those under a community treatment order (CTO) report the highest degree of personal recovery. The qualitative material shows that the service users interpreted the concept of recovery differently than researchers and professionals. The ACT service users highlighted three important elements: flexible treatment, medication and access to a car. They emphasized the necessity for basic needs to be met in order to experience a meaningful recovery process, and these basic needs may be of even greater importance to those under CTOs. Their experiences should imply a greater emphasis on securing basic needs such as secure housing, sounder finances and access to the normal benefits offered by society.

"Hitting the wall": Lived experiences of mental health crises.

BACKGROUND: As Norway moves toward the provision of home-based crisis response, knowledge is needed about understandings of mental health crisis and effective ways of addressing crises within the home. OBJECTIVE: To elicit and learn from service users' experiences about the subjective meanings of crisis and what kind of help will be most effective in resolving mental health crises. THEORETICAL: A phenomenological-hermeneutic cooperative inquiry method was used to elicit and analyse focus group responses from mental health service users who had experienced crises. RESULTS: FINDINGS CLUSTERED INTO THREE THEMES: (1) Crisis as multifaceted and varied experiences; (2) losing the skills and structure of everyday life; and (3) complexities involved in family support. CONCLUSION: Several aspects of crises require an expansion of the biomedical model of acute intervention to include consideration of the personal and familial meaning of the crisis, attention to the home context, and activities of daily living that are disrupted by the crisis, and ways for the person and the family to share in and learn from resolution of the crisis.