Generativity among persons providing or receiving peer or mutual support: a scoping review

Objective: People with lived experience of mental illness or distress can help others recover through peer or mutual support. One way they may help others recover is by fostering generativity, which refers to one’s concern for and contributions toward the betterment of others, including future generations (e.g., through caregiving, engaging in civics). Generativity may add purpose to one’s life, benefit society, and improve areas which persons with lived experience feel are important for their recovery. Despite its importance, the state of knowledge on experiences and facilitators of generativity, as well as the impact that engaging in generativity has on the lives of persons engaged in peer or mutual support, is unclear.

Method: A librarian-assisted scoping review of the literature was conducted in five steps: identifying the research question and relevance; selecting studies; charting data; and coding and summarizing the results.

Results: Out of 11,862 articles that were screened, only 18 met eligibility criteria. Most studies were conducted in the United States and included White/Caucasian participants. Our synthesis produced themes related to generative actions, which included helping others, changing organizations and systems, and sharing personal stories. Themes describing facilitators of generativity included individual-level and organizational-level factors. One theme reflecting the positive psychosocial impact of engaging in generativity was produced.

Conclusions and Implications for Practice: Findings from this study point to several knowledge gaps to be investigated in future research and can facilitate the implementation of peer support initiatives aimed at fostering generativity, which may in turn promote recovery