In Chapter 7, we start out by describing the four PhD projects our life stories were derived from. We then describe how we coded the life stories to answer our two main questions concerning the personal consequences of mental illness and potential pathways to thriving. The steps in the coding procedure included 1) open reading of life stories and developing themes, 2) establish coding manual with themes, 3) use manual to code all life stories for presence of themes and count frequencies (reported in Chapter 8), and 4) develop subthemes and superordinate themes (described in Chapters 9-12). We outline potential threats to generalizability of our findings, including that the sample overrepresented women and possibly individuals with relatively high levels of functioning. Furthermore, we note that the Danish cultural context, including the extensive welfare system and low emphasis on religion, may shape our findings.