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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Substance Use Disorders and Behavioral Addictions
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1458026
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovations in Recovery Science: Pathways, Policies, and Platforms that Promote Thriving After Addiction View all 8 articles
Psychological Safety Mediates Attendance and Recovery-Related Outcomes within The Phoenix: A Sober-Active Community
Provisionally accepted- 1 The Phoenix, Boston, MA, United States
- 2 Recovery Research Institute (RRI), Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- 3 Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- 4 Leeds Trinity University, Leeds, United Kingdom
Background: People in recovery from a substance use disorder often have difficulties forming prosocial relationships or accessing supportive communities. Providing psychological safety within recovery communities may be uniquely beneficial, yet psychological safety has mostly been studied among professional organizations and not among vulnerable populations. This program evaluation study examined associations between attendance, psychological safety, and retrospective recoveryrelated changes. Methods: Participants included 204 members of The Phoenix (13% response rate) who completed a survey that addressed recovery status and current perceptions of psychological safety, with hope, connection, empowerment, motivation to stay sober, mental health and physical health at 3-months and thinking back to baseline (i.e., "thentest"). Demographic information and attendance data were also collected. Results: Structural equation modeling found a good fit for the model (χ2 = 187.40, p = 0.23; RMSEA =0.049, GFI = 0.90, CFI = 0.98, SRMSR = 0.05.) and all path coefficients were statistically significant (p <0.05). Participants' perceived psychological safety fully mediated the relationship between attendance and recovery-related outcomes. Attendance was also directly and positively associated with physical health. Conclusions: Due to positive improvements in health and recovery-related outcomes mediated by psychological safety, results show benefits of attending events hosted by The Phoenix for those in recovery from substance use. Additional research should further validate the importance of psychological safety as a key mediator of the recovery process.
Keywords: Addiction recovery, substance use, alcohol use, peers, Community-based organization
Received: 01 Jul 2024; Accepted: 03 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Heinrich, Wyker, Collinson, Eddie, Best and Hillios. 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:
Katie M Heinrich, The Phoenix, Boston, MA, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.