Self-help and community mental health agency outcomes: a recovery-focused randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE Self-help agencies (SHAs) are consumer-operated service organizations managed as participatory democracies. Members are involved in all aspects of organizational management, because a premise of SHAs is that organizationally empowered individuals become more empowered in their own lives, which promotes recovery. The study sought to determine the effectiveness of combined SHA and community mental health agency (CMHA) services in assisting recovery for persons with serious mental illness. METHODS A weighted sample of new clients seeking CMHA services was randomly assigned to regular CMHA services or to combined SHA-CMHA services at five proximally located pairs of SHA drop-in centers and county CMHAs. Member-clients (N=505) were assessed at baseline and at one, three, and eight months on five recovery-focused outcome measures: personal empowerment, self-efficacy, social integration, hope, and psychological functioning. Scales had high levels of reliability and independently established validity. Outcomes were evaluated with a repeated-measures multivariate analysis of covariance. RESULTS Overall results indicated that combined SHA-CMHA services were significantly better able to promote recovery of client-members than CMHA services alone. The sample with combined services showed greater improvements in personal empowerment (F=3.99, df=3 and 491, p<.008), self-efficacy (F=11.20, df=3 and 491, p<.001), and independent social integration (F=12.13, df=3 and 491, p<.001). Hopelessness (F=4.36, df=3 and 491, p<.005) and symptoms (F=4.49, df=3 and 491, p<.004) dissipated more quickly and to a greater extent in the combined condition than in the CMHA-only condition. CONCLUSIONS Member-empowering SHAs run as participatory democracies in combination with CMHA services produced more positive recovery-focused results than CMHA services alone.