Measuring personal recovery in older adults with bipolar
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing and evaluating a questionnaire to assess personal recovery experiences in older people with bipolar disorder
IRAS ID
318878
Contact name
Jennifer Matthewson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 7 months, 1 days
Research summary
Bipolar occurs in around 1% of people aged over 65 and can impact relationships and ability to do tasks or activities. There is little research on older people with bipolar disorder (BD). There is even less research on treatment that helps them. Most therapies for younger people with BD focus on clinical recovery such as symptoms and relapse. Despite this, research with service users shows they want therapy to focus on personal recovery. Personal recovery is about having hope and living a full life. As a result, services are starting to focus more on personal recovery.
Research often looks at how therapy can help people with their recovery. To do this, there needs to be a useful measure of recovery. There are no current measures so this study hopes to create a reliable measure of recovery experiences for use with older adults.
The study will involve working with people over 60 years old with a diagnosis of BD to see what personal recovery means to them. Older adults with lived experience of BD will meet online or in the community to discuss their views on recovery. They will look at a recovery measure created for younger people with BD and discuss if items feel relevant. A measure for older adults will then be created and checked by service users and clinicians to ensure it is easy to read.Once the measure is finalised, a group of older adults with bipolar living in the community will complete it. They will also complete other measures on mental health and wellbeing. The group will be asked to complete the measure again 4 weeks later to see if their answers change. The study will take place over two years from when older adults are invited to take part to when results are written up.
REC name
London - Brighton & Sussex Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/LO/0193
Date of REC Opinion
10 Mar 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion