'It's like someone is holding your hand, an invisible hand': A grounded theory study of participation and personal recovery in Flexible Assertive Community Treatment.

Background: Participation in everyday life and personal recovery is often adversely affected for individuals with complex mental health needs. Flexible Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) is a recovery-oriented service targeting participation in everyday life and personal recovery and is thus important to understand from the perspectives of service users.

Aim: To explore how service users experience the care and support they receive from FACT as facilitating processes of participation in everyday life and in their personal recovery process.

Materials and methods: A constructivist Grounded Theory approach was employed, involving 14 in-depth interviews conducted from January to November 2023 with FACT service users (9 women, 5 men; 23-55 years) within the Swedish adult general Mental Health Services.

Results: The process of Building genuine relationships between participants and FACT team members enabled Doing as a way of recovering. This was facilitated by how FACT was organised, promoting continuity and flexibility in care and support.

Conclusions and significance: This study contributes to a greater understanding of how genuine relationships between FACT service users and team members provide opportunities for participation and doing as a means for personal recovery. The results underscore the significance of incorporating an occupational therapy perspective into recovery-oriented services.