The joint project VISION-RA of Hochschule RheinMain (coordinating) and the Catholic University of Applied Sciences Mainz aims to improve emotional coordination processes between professionals in (community) psychiatric practical experience and users of their services who have been diagnosed as chronically mentally ill in order to cultivate working alliances between them that promote recovery. In this regard, VISION-RA aims to develop video and theater-based social innovations in a participatory and research-based manner as part of a formative evaluation based on concepts of responsive and documentary evaluation research, which can methodically increase the effectiveness of such working alliances through their dialogical orientation.

In contrast to previous reflection tools aimed purely at the professionals with regard to improving emotional coordination processes, the methods developed and tested in VISION-RA also decidedly include their counterparts. At the same time, the social innovations consistently developed, calibrated and implemented within the framework of a participatory formative evaluation process function as new, object-appropriate methods for researching processes of emotional self-regulation in the internal relationships of people who have been diagnosed as chronically mentally ill, as well as in the relationships between them and professionals in (community) psychiatry.

VISION-RA thus aims in a central way at the participatory reconstruction of concrete interaction practical experiences in given organizational structures in order to improve them in a communication-oriented manner. The research-based qualification modules are intended to train a professional habitus that is also able to initiate new recovery-promoting working alliances on an emotional level.