Mental Health Recovery Measure (MHRM)

Abstract

The Mental Health Recovery Measure (MHRM) is a widely utilized self-report instrument designed to assess an individual’s progress and status regarding their personal mental health recovery journey. Developed by Young and Bullock (1999, 2003), the scale operationalizes recovery across multiple dimensions, moving beyond clinical symptom reduction to focus on subjective experiences, personal growth, functional status, and overall well-being. The MHRM is crucial for both clinical assessment and research, providing a reliable and valid measure that aligns with the consumer-driven model of recovery in mental health services.

Comprising 30 items, the MHRM uses a 5-point Likert scale format, allowing respondents to rate their agreement with statements reflecting various aspects of recovery, such as self-management, hope, personal responsibility, and social connectedness. Its comprehensive structure, supported by robust psychometric properties, makes it a valuable tool for tracking outcomes and tailoring recovery-oriented interventions.

Keywords

Mental Health Recovery Measure, MHRM, Mental Health Recovery, Psychometric Scale, Self-Empowerment, Well-Being, Psychological Assessment, Consumer-Driven Recovery, Spirituality.

Authors

Young, S. L., Bullock, W. A.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Mental Health Recovery Measure (MHRM) is to quantitatively assess the subjective experience and progress of individuals engaged in mental health recovery. Unlike traditional measures focused solely on symptom severity, the MHRM aims to capture the multi-faceted process of recovery, which includes personal growth, autonomy, functional improvement, and the ability to cope with mental illness challenges.

The scale serves as a practical tool for clinicians and researchers to monitor changes over time, evaluate the effectiveness of recovery-oriented services, and facilitate dialogue between service providers and consumers regarding their personal goals and strengths. It emphasizes the individual’s role in their own recovery, promoting concepts such as self-determination and personal agency.

Construct

The MHRM measures the psychological construct of Mental Health Recovery, defined not as a cure but as a process of living a meaningful, satisfying life despite the presence of mental health challenges. This construct is highly dimensional, encompassing aspects of personal fulfillment, social integration, and empowerment.

The scale operationalizes recovery across eight key dimensions, as identified through factor analysis. These dimensions collectively represent the core components essential for achieving mental health recovery, ranging from internal psychological states (e.g., self-worth, optimism) to external behaviors and supports (e.g., social functioning, advocacy, spirituality). The focus is distinctly on personal strength and potential rather than deficits.

Validity

While specific detailed validity coefficients (e.g., concurrent, predictive) are often presented in full academic articles, the structure of the MHRM demonstrates strong face and content validity, as its items directly reflect established principles of recovery-oriented care developed in collaboration with mental health consumers.

Further validation studies, such as the thesis work by Bodine (2013), have supported the use of the MHRM as a robust clinical assessment tool, confirming its ability to measure the intended construct effectively within clinical populations. The identified factor structure provides evidence of construct validity, showing that the 30 items group logically into meaningful, distinct dimensions of recovery.

Reliability

The MHRM demonstrates excellent internal consistency and temporal stability, confirming its reliability as a psychometric scale. The overall internal consistency of the 30-item scale is exceptionally high, with a total Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.93, indicating that the items reliably measure a single underlying construct (the total recovery experience).

Furthermore, the test-retest reliability confirms the stability of the measure over short periods. The correlation coefficients were measured at r=0.91 after both a one-week interval and a two-week interval. These high correlations suggest that the MHRM provides highly consistent scores for individuals whose recovery status is not expected to change significantly within these short time frames.

Factor Analysis

Factor analysis of the Mental Health Recovery Measure (MHRM) revealed an eight-factor structure, which provides a nuanced understanding of the recovery process. The internal consistency for the total scale (alpha 0.93) is very high, while the subscales show varying, but acceptable, levels of internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha).

The eight identified factors and their respective internal consistency scores are:

• Overcoming Stuckness (alpha 0.60)
• Self-Empowerment (alpha 0.82)
• Learning and Self-Redefinition (alpha 0.79)
• Basic Functioning (alpha 0.62)
• Overall Well-Being (alpha 0.86)
• New Potentials (alpha 0.62)
• Advocacy/Enrichment (alpha 0.66)
• Spirituality (alpha 0.89)

These factors highlight the comprehensive nature of the MHRM, confirming that recovery involves not only functional improvements (Basic Functioning) and emotional stability (Overall Well-Being) but also deeply personal processes such as learning, self-redefinition, and the utilization of spiritual resources.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report Psychological Scale

Format: 30 items administered using a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from Strongly Disagree (SD) to Strongly Agree (SA).

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: Individuals with serious and persistent mental health problems.

Age Group: Adults (Typically 18+)

Population Details: Developed for use with mental health consumers to measure their subjective recovery experience.

Test Methodology: Respondents rate their level of agreement with each statement based on the following anchors: SD = Strongly Disagree, D = Disagree, NS = Not Sure, A = Agree, SA = Strongly Agree.

Keywords

Recovery Assessment, Empowerment, Quality of Life, Personal Growth, Functional Status, Test-Retest Reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha, Psychometrics.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source.

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected]

Correspondence Address: Available from the University of Toledo, Department of Psychology (#918), Toledo, OH 43606-3390 (per 2003 reference).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The initial development of the MHRM occurred in 1999, with a revised version and major publication detailing the psychometrics emerging in 2003. The scale is often utilized freely for non-commercial research and clinical purposes, though formal permissions should be sought from the authors, S. L. Young and W. A. Bullock, for any large-scale or commercial application. The original PDF of the instrument can be downloaded here: https://www.power2u.org/downloads/pn-55.pdf.

Reference’s

• Bullock, W.A. & Young, S.L. (2003, August). The Mental Health Recovery Measure (MHRM). Presented at the 111th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association Meeting, Toronto, Canada.
• Bodine, Megan N. (2013). “Validation of the Mental Health Recovery Measure as a clinical assessment”. Theses and Dissertations. Paper 27. Available at: http://utdr.utoledo.edu/theses-dissertations
• Young, S. L., & Bullock, W.A. (2003). The mental health recovery measure. Available from the University of Toledo, Department of Psychology (#918), Toledo, OH 43606-3390.

Items of the Mental Health Recovery Measure (MHRM)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. I work hard towards my mental health recovery.
2. Even though there are hard days‚ things are improving for me.
3. I ask for help when I am not feeling well.
4. I take risks to move forward with my recovery.
5. I believe in myself.
6. I have control over my mental health problems.
7. I am in control of my life.
8. I socialize and make friends.
9. Every day is a new opportunity for learning.
10. I still grow and change in positive ways despite my mental health problems.
11. Even though I may still have problems‚ I value myself as a person of worth.
12. I understand myself and have a good sense of who I am.
13. I eat nutritious meals every day.
14. I go out and participate in enjoyable activities every week.
15. I make the effort to get to know other people.
16. I am comfortable with my use of prescribed medications.
17. I feel good about myself.
18. The way I think about things helps me to achieve my goals.
19. My life is pretty normal.
20. I feel at peace with myself.
21. I maintain a positive attitude for weeks at a time.
22. My quality of life will get better in the future.
23. Every day that I get up‚ I do something productive.
24. I am making progress towards my goals.
25. When I am feeling low‚ my religious faith or spirituality helps me feel better.
26. My religious faith or spirituality supports my recovery.
27. I advocate for the rights of myself and others with mental health problems.
28. I engage in work or other activities that enrich myself and the world around me.
29. I cope effectively with stigma associated with ha‎ving a mental health problem.
30. I have enough money to spend on extra things or activities that enrich my life.