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1.INTRODUCTION = 23 were published until 2011) was about illness experience (Figure 2). This is not surprising because illness is a significant field in health psychology (where IPA was developed) and the experience of illness is an essential part of people’s life living with the condition (e.g., Arroll & Senior, 2008). A significant part of IPA studies was published about psychological distress (e.g., Howes, Benton, & Edwards, 2005), and described the phenomenon itself, the experience of recovery from distress, the professionals’ understanding and the institutional and cultural context (Smith et al., 2009). Since IPA is a suitable method for a sensitive research topic, IPA has also been widely adopted in studying sex and sexuality (e.g., Coyle & Rafalin, 2001). IPA’s particular feature is that identity could be examined fruitfully, that is why many studies examining life transition and identity (e.g., migration (Timotijevic & Breakwell, 2000), homelessness (Riggs & Coyle, 2002) utilized IPA (Smith et al., 2009). Patient's illness experience* 69 Psychological distress? 45 Carers’ experience 30 Client’s experience of therapy 18 Reproduction 18 Genetics 15 Health professionals’ experience 14 Dementia 14 Occupational psychology 14 Sex/sexuality 13 Gender 11 Eating disorders 10 Therapists" experience 9 Learning disabilities 7 Sport/exercise 7 Religion/spirituality 5 IT 5 Education 4 Addiction 4 Alcohol 4 Alternative therapy 3 Music 3 2. Figure Research topics where IPA is often used, based on the figure of Smith (2011, p. 13.) The review of Smith (2011) did not explicitly underline the importance of IPA studies on recovery from addiction (maybe because the significant part of these studies were published after 2011), maybe because research inquiry of recovery from addiction is in the border of many basic research areas where IPA is used: health psychology, addiction, identity, recovery. The first influential IPA study about addiction and recovery was published by Larkin and Griffiths (2002) which argued that subjective accounts could have a value in the psychological understanding of addiction, in which identity has an essential role. Also, the authors aimed to explore IPA’s suitability as an approach to the analysis of observational data.
