Promoting self management in indigenous people with mental illness and substance misuse

Objectives: To explore relapse prevention strategies in remote Indigenous people with mental illness. Method: A mixed methods design in which an exploratory phase of qualitative research was followed by a nested randomised controlled trial and concurrent collection of qualitative data over 18 months. The research team collected detail of early warning signs of relapse from clients at each data collection point. Results: Indigenous people with mental illness identified a range of warning signs of relapse and those signs were similar to those found in other studies. Conclusions: The study supports exploration of early warning signs routinely at assessment as an important relapse prevention strategy. It is important that information and education about common prodromal symptoms of relapse is delivered in language and format which is accessible to Indigenous people.