A Comprehensive Literature Review of Recovery Support Programs: Implications for Researchers

The debate surrounding recovery support, illustrating the challenges associated with defining such a complex and multidimensional concept, is explored. A recovery support model, including an overview of the six main players and their impact on an individual’s path to recovery, is proposed and presented. 

Recovery support is a concept that is largely theoretical in nature. The literature points to a further distinction between the military and civilian settings. In the military, focus is placed at the point of treatment in the continuum of care while in the civilian settings, recovery support is placed at the rehabilitation stage in the continuum of care. The proposed model in this paper positions recovery support at the diagnosis stage.  Additionally, many military programs focus on facilitating access to clinical staff, community outreach, and the provision of referrals for both service members and their families. The programs and models identified in the civilian setting were mainly community-driven with a greater focus given to the out-patient stages of the continuum of care.

Three themes regarding recovery support are described throughout the literature. Some regard recovery support as a collaborative process, characterized by the involvement of the patient, family, clinical staff, peers, command or employer and community. Others believe that recovery support is injury-dependent, meaning that the composition and collaboration of those providing recovery supports need to be based on the characteristics of each case. A third area of debate is related to the stage at which recovery support enters the individual’s continuum of care. In response to the current debate found in the field of recovery support, the goal of this paper is to provide information on an individual’s path to successful reintegration and related current practices.

This presentation sheds light on the importance of engaged stakeholders who collaborate throughout the continuum of care in the military and civilian healthcare settings to produce a patient-centered recovery support infrastructure. The literature indicates that stakeholder involvement, in concert with early detection and care coordination, decreases the patient’s utilization of the health care system overall. This presentation proposes a recovery support model that is built on these initial findings. Longitudinal research is required to gather data that substantiates recovery support interventions, in an effort to inform and improve the recovery support infrastructure.