Title: Twenty first century recovery: Exploring self-management, via wellness recovery action planning (WRAP), with mental health and acquired brain injury cohorts

Biography:

Denise O’Dwyer is a Chartered Psychologist and has been working with Rehab Group for over ten years.  Based in the West of Ireland, Denise works in Quest Brain Injury Services, Galway, and also covers Adult Mental Health as well as Generalised and Specific Learning Disabilities with The National Learning Network, Mayo. She has completed her Doctorate in 2015 on Twenty First Century Recovery and Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP), within the contexts of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and Adult Mental Health.  She is a proponent of the application of simple, daily and functional activity, to improve and maintain mental health and wellbeing. Her research, involving 105 service users of The Rehab Group, showed the depression and anxiety levels of participants in a WRAP programme, significantly lowered, by comparison with their respective wait list counterparts. Her research has been widely received, most recently at Neuro Rehabilitation Conferences in Saudi Arabia, and Prague.  Denise is currently in the process of writing her first book, rooted mainly in the area of Humanistic Psychology, as well as drawing from other relevant fields in making Psychology applicable for everyone.

Abstract

The concept of Recovery has taken on new meanings in recent years. Traditional emphasis on diagnosis and repair, has been steadily replaced with the notion of developing and maintaining psychological wellness. This study examined Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP), as a possible intervention in mental health management.  A between groups case cohort design was employed to examine the effects of WRAP with Mental Health and ABI populations, as well as their respective wait list control counterparts. Cohen’s d showed large effect sizes in the difference between treatment and respective control groups in the reduction of Anxiety and Depression, measured by the HADS, for both the ABI ( Cohen’s d for Anxiety  1.03; Cohen’s d for Depression  1.73 ) and Mental Health cohorts ( Cohen’s d for Anxiety 1.29; Cohen’s d  for Depression 1.13) . Results demonstrate the potential of WRAP in offering a fresh, twenty-first century perspective, in the functional management of mental health.  Prior to this study, there was no evidence of WRAP having been trialled within the context of ABI, and based on the results indicated, it may indeed be a worthy contender in the everyday management of mental health across populations.