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Background: As the paradigm underlying mental health care slowly shifts from an approach primarily institutional and medical in its orientation toward one more community-based and recovery-oriented, housing needs have come to the forefront. Many people with persistent mental illness accept group home living situations that do not necessarily meet their needs, and do not align with the recovery vision. Research focused on recovery for residents of group homes is all but absent in the literature. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges and opportunities for enabling group homes to increase their capacity to serve as an environment that integrates the recovery vision. Method: Using ethnographic methods, this case study examined the cultural milieu of a group home, how recovery is understood within the setting, and the impact of policies and practices on enacting the recovery vision. By converging multiple strategies for data collection (participant observation, key informant interviews, and document analysis), a multi-level perspective was achieved. The use of the social-ecological model, with its attention to multiple levels of influence, emerged as a highly relevant perspective, without which the recovery vision cannot be realized. Findings: The culture within the home revealed a comfortable atmosphere, basic needs being met, access to planned and unplanned activity, and caring relationships with staff, which contribute to a place attachment that could be difficult to loosen. There is a lack of awareness of recovery-enabling practice at multiple levels, which emerged as a key challenge to its implementation. Although some policies at the government level support self-sufficiency as an important objective, others make progress towards this ideal difficult, if not impossible, such as those related to funding. The focus on enhancing well-being in the day-to-day setting subsumes the growth goals associated with recovery. Conclusion: Integrating the recovery vision within group home could benefit from confronting well-established approaches, embracing advocacy roles, and addressing mechanisms for change at multiple levels. Only then will people with mental illness living in group homes reap the benefits of social justice, social inclusion and full citizenship that come with recovery. / Thesis (Ph.D, Rehabilitation Science) -- Queen's University, 2013-02-27 23:27:44.925

As a psychotherapist working in the field of eating disorders, I have a long-standing interest in accessing the subjective expertise of a wider group of sufferers, including what it is like and what it means to suffer from anorexia, the factors that help to support recovery and the role psychotherapy plays in contributing towards the recovery process. This study provides a timely addition to the literature on the nature and role of psychotherapy as a treatment for anorexia. Studies that explore the sufferer’s understanding and experience of developing anorexia are extremely limited and a gap exists in examining the role of psychotherapy from the recipient’s position and the ways in which psychotherapy supports an individual's recovery process. However, as this thesis demonstrates, people who have suffered and recovered from anorexia hold valuable information on the factors that support recovery and their expertise as recipients of psychotherapy has much to teach clinicians and researchers in the field of eating disorders. The theoretical foundation of this study conceptualises experience in relation to its narration. I recruited twelve participants drawn from across Scotland who provided narrative data during a focus group and a semi structured individual interview. Participants provided experiential accounts on developing anorexia, on recovery and the role of psychotherapy in their recovery process. A phenomenological approach to data analysis was deployed using Smith et al’s (2009) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as a methodological guide. Drawing upon an IPA methodology I identified a number of central themes. Within accounts of developing anorexia, themes relating to interpersonal attachment, trauma and/or identity played a central role in the illness beliefs and experiences of participants. Within accounts of recovery, participants offered two main framings. The first defined recovery as an achievable completion point, signally the end of illness. The second defined recovery as an on-going process concerned more with the management of anorexia than the elimination of it. Factors that support recovery included those that are integral to the individual participant as well as those that are made available by their environment. In accounts of the role of psychotherapy, a number of common factors across participants’ experiences of psychotherapy were identified spanning support, learning and action factors. In addition, the quality of the therapeutic relationship with the psychotherapist played a crucial role in supporting the recovery process. I argue that participant beliefs about and experiences of recovery directly relate to their understandings and perceptions about what precipitated anorexia. Recovery took place when changes could be made in relation to these significant themes and psychotherapy was most effective when it addressed these issues as part of the psychotherapy process. The findings from this study point to the importance of working with the subjective understandings and beliefs sufferers have about their illness experience as a key objective within psychotherapy practice. They also underline the significance of a strong therapeutic relationship as a key component of the recovery process.

The material presented in this thesis falls into two main sections: 1. The determination of barium, strontium and calcium in oil-well waters (i) Determination of barium It is revealed that the addition of magnesium (5 g l-1) to samples for the determination of barium by d.c. plasma atomic emission spectrometry enhances the sensitivity of the analysis and dramatically reduces interference from calcium and strontium at both atomic and ionic emission wavelengths. (ii) Determination of strontium The determination of strontium in waters, was also subject to the interference of the concomitant elements like calcium, barium and magnesium. However, the addition of 3 g l-1 sodium with or without 5 g l-1 of magnesium eliminated all the interferences in the d.c. plasma and in the dinitrogen oxide-acetylene flame. (iii) Determination of calcium The determination of calcium in oil-well waters encountered some interference arising from the presence of sulfate. However, the effects of phosphate and sodium were also investigated in both air-acetylene and dinitrogen oxide-acetylene flames and in the direct current plasma. It was shown that the interference was reduced in the cool flame when 2 g l-1 of lanthanum was added. The absorbance of calcium was depressed by the presence of 2 g l-1 of sodium. The interferences from both sulfate and phosphate were eliminated when the hot flame or the d.c. plasma were used. 2. Slurry nebulization for soil, sediment and fertilizer samples A slurry atomisation direct current plasma (DCP) emission and flame atomic absorption and emission (FAAS and FAES) for the determination of alkaline earth elements and also of other minor and major elements in soils, marine sediments and fertilizer is reported. The results obtained by slurry nebulization, with lithium added as ionisation buffer, were compared with results obtained following fusion with LiBO2 at 950o for 10 minutes and dissolution of the residues in 4&'37 HNO3.