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REVIEW article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Rehabilitation
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1591772
This article is part of the Research Topic The Recovery College model: state of the art, current research developments and future directions View all articles
A Scoping Review of Outcome Measures for People Living with Dementia and Family Supporters to Evaluate Recovery College Dementia Courses
Provisionally accepted
Jarin Alam 1
Juniper West 1
Esme Moniz-Cook 2
Emma Wolverson 3
Melanie Handley 4 Linda Birt 5
Chris Fox 6*- 1 Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, Norwich, United Kingdom
- 2 University of Hull, Hull, Yorkshire and the Humber, United Kingdom
- 3 University of West London, Ealing, United Kingdom
- 4 University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Herefordshire, United Kingdom
- 5 University of Leicester, Leicester, East Midlands, United Kingdom
- 6 University of Exeter, Exeter, England, United Kingdom
Introduction: Recovery Colleges (RC/RCs) aim to promote personal recovery through coproduced courses, grounded in the CHIME (Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning, Empowerment) framework. The DiSCOVERY research programme noted that RC dementia courses may offer a person-centred approach to post-diagnostic dementia care. However, the lack of validated outcome measures for this context presents a challenge in evaluating RCs effectiveness. This scoping review examines potential outcome measures for evaluating the impact of RC dementia courses. Methods: The review followed the Arksey and O'Malley framework, searching for eligible papers across six databases related to dementia and the CHIME strengths-based approach.Instruments relating to personal recovery and positive psychology for people with dementia or their family supporters were included. Measures of cognition, clinical symptoms or 'negative constructs' (e.g. burden) were excluded. DiSCOVERY stakeholder groups (people with dementia and clinicians) met to collaboratively identify meaningful domains and relevant measures. Results: Fourteen instruments relating to hope, resilience, self-efficacy, empowerment and coping were identified. Stakeholders of people living with dementia endorsed domains of empowerment, resilience and hope. No single instrument captured the range of outcomes that underlie concepts of RC dementia course. Discussion: This study contributes to the limited literature on instruments for evaluation of concepts underlying RC dementia courses. Findings suggest a need for adaptation and further validation of existing measures, to address responsiveness, interpretability and the inclusion of domains related to recovery. Future research on recovery in the context of dementia should involve developing or adapting new measures, conducting feasibility studies, and exploring cultural sensitivity for diverse populations
Keywords: Dementia, Outcome measure, Personal Recovery, Recovery college, Positive Psychology, hope, resilience, empowerment
Received: 11 Mar 2025; Accepted: 02 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alam, West, Moniz-Cook, Wolverson, Handley, Birt and Fox. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Chris Fox, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4PY, England, United Kingdom
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