Personal Recovery Dagmar Narusson, PhD

Personal-recovery and agency-enhancing client work in the field of mental health and social rehabilitation: Perspectives of persons with lived experience and specialists

Our team at The CARe Network would like to congratulate Dagmar Narusson on her PhD defence held on 21st October 2019.

From left: Riina Järve-Tammiste, Aster Tooma, Dagmar Narusson, Zsolt Bugarszki, Jodee, Jean Pierre Wilken

Dagmar Narusson has defended for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology. Her Supervisors namely, Dagmar Kutsar, PhD, Associate Professor. Institute of Social Studies University of Tartu.

Jean Pierre Wilken, Professor University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht, the Netherlands

Opponent: Alie Weerman, Professor University of Applied Sciences, Windesheim, the Netherlands

The result of this research is: interviewees’ reflections indicated that people with mental illness experience lack the skills to develop connections with the community because they were not taught to think in this manner, and earlier traumatizing and victimizing events are so powerful that they take over memory. Two cultural peculiarities related to the notion of “hope” in the recovery concept revealed that people in Estonia, compared with people in other countries, generally have little trust in other people and that living in a language context which does not make a grammatical distinction between the present and future influences how hopeful perspectives are created.

STUDY I: Narusson, D. (2013). The Disabled persons and rehabilitation specialists dialogue within the rehabilitation assessment and planning process: Analysis based on assessment case reports. Journal of Social Policy and Social Work in Transition, 2, 10–30, DOI:10.1921/5304030202.

STUDY II: Narusson, D. & Wilken, J.P. (2019). Recovery-oriented support work: the perspective of people with lived experience. Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice.

STUDY III: Narusson, D. & Wilken, J.P. (2018). Recovery in the Community: Relational and Cultural Sensitivity. Journal of Recovery in Mental Health, 2 (1): Recovery in the Community, 68–81. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/rmh/article/view/31915.

One of the conclusion: "Currently, the terms personal recovery and community do not have unified and common meaning in Estonian society, and for this reason persons with mental health difficulties do not use them consistently. Socio-cultural context peculiarity arises when persons with disability answer questions about hope and being hopeful. Hopefulness seemed important, but persons do not have awareness as to keep hopeful. What also emerged was that hope and feeling hopeful are related to trust in other people and other people’s support in the personal recovery process."

URL to PhD dissertation:

https://dspace.ut.ee/bitstream/handle/10062/65258/narusson_dagmar.pdf