title: Developing a recovery college: a preliminary exercise in establishing regional readiness and community needs.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Recovery orientated intervention has experienced a paradigm shift towards stakeholder training and education within recovery colleges. Such colleges are typically underpinned by a culture of emancipatory education that aims to facilitate recovery through educational choice.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The study aims to establish regional readiness for a recovery college. Specifically, we aim to uncover key stakeholder attitudes towards recovery, outline a contextual conceptualization of recovery and show how inductive, community-based research can incorporate stakeholder views with core fidelity markers of a recovery college.
  
  
  METHODS
  A mixed methods approach, specifically a cross-sectional survey, was adopted to intersect quantitative scales of stakeholder attitudes and qualitative assessment of recovery concepts and community needs.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Stakeholders' recovery attitudes were positive overall with some variation between participant groups. Concepts of recovery were developing independent abilities, establishing connectedness to support and as a journey. The needs cited by the stakeholders were largely correlated with the core fidelity markers of a recovery college.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A community psychology approach offers a means to ascertain regional readiness for a recovery college, and uncover key development foci based on community needs. We recommend that service areas adopt a similar approach when considering recovery-orientated service developments.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology.|c Centre for Social Issues Research, University of Limerick , Limerick , Ireland , and.
authors.forename: Joy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology.|c Centre for Social Issues Research, University of Limerick , Limerick , Ireland , and.
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gallagher
authors.affiliation: b School of Education and.|c Centre for Social Issues Research, University of Limerick , Limerick , Ireland , and.|d i-TEACH, Teaching for Inclusion Research Lab , University of Limerick , Ireland.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: McMahon
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003156:Community Mental Health Services / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D008875:Middle Aged; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Community psychology; mental-health; recovery college