Dr. Mary Leamy on recovery and CHIME

CHIME stands for Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment. The framework was developed by researchers in England and presented in 2011 after a systematic review of close to one hundred qualitative studies on personal recovery.

Dr. Mary Leamy, one of the authors of the original framework, guided the students through the categories of the model and pointed out that it is more complex than the acronym alone suggests. Students also learned about recent research, including ongoing studies in Thailand — valuable because most recovery research so far comes from Western countries.

While CHIME explains what matters for personal recovery, it was not designed to measure recovery processes. Researchers at King’s College London therefore developed the INSPIRE tool together with service users.

The visit was part of the CHIME 2.0 project, which develops and delivers recovery-oriented training courses for leaders and staff in Norwegian municipal mental health and substance use services.