Sammanfattning
The objective of this study was to elaborate on the core psychological concepts of change and recovery by exploring change processes from patients’ perspectives. An important motivation was to expand existing knowledge on recovery among those of us who struggle with co-occurring substance use disorders (SUD) and severe mental illness (SMI), a demographic which by exclusion criteria in care systems as well as research traditions is often not given due attention. The method chosen was semi-structured interviews with eight users of an outreach treatment team for people struggling with co-occurring SUD and SMI, six of which were subjected to a grounded theory analysis. The core category, an anchor in normality, describes change-facilitating aspects of interactions with health care and public services, as well as clients’ identity work. The results highlight that what users experienced as facilitating recovery in change processes is twofold. Social inclusion was described as “being offered an anchor in normality”, while patients also described “feeling more normal” as idiosyncratic identity processes.