Making it Sane: Using Narrative to Explore Theory in a Mental Health Consumer-Run Organization

My previous research led to the development of a theoretical model explaining the processes by which people can benefit from consumer-run organizations (CROs). This study builds on that work by exploring the ability of the conceptual framework to capture the complexity of seven diverse life history narratives from participants at one CRO. To construct life history narratives, I used data from participant observation and a series of in-depth, minimally structured interviews. Application of the proposed conceptual framework to the narratives provides a consistent structure that organizes the experiences of informants into meaningful components. This application of the framework to the data also enables an exploration of the framework's ability to account for the lives of all informants. This analysis leads to conclusions on the conceptual framework's ability to explain how people benefit from CROs.