-
A Person-Centered Spiritual Recovery Tool for Hospitalization and Beyond
The enormous charge to the mental health care system to keep hospital length-of-stays brief while delivering Person-Centered care grows increasingly complicated. One key to meeting regulatory mandates while focusing on long-term healing is to use simple spiritual recovery tools that people can...
-
The Evolution of Recovery-Oriented Services in NYC and at MHA-NYC
New York City has a long and proud history of providing a wide range of recovery-oriented programs for individuals with serious and persistent mental illness. Following in the activist path of Clifford Beers who started the modern mental health movement in 1909, six former psychiatric patients and...
-
Recovery-Oriented Practice and Health Care Reform
One common criticism of the concept of recovery is that, while it has offered a hopeful—even inspiring—vision for persons with mental illnesses and their loved ones, it has not provided concrete guidance for how mental health care needs to change in order to be more effective in promoting it....
-
Recovery and Employment Go Hand in Hand at Federation of Organizations
Employment and/or volunteer activities provide socially-recognized, valued roles that contribute to community integration and enhance and support the recovery process. Federation of Organizations has been employing consumers to deliver mental health services since 1981. By now 20-30% of our...
-
Recovering the Person in Treatment
Person-centered recovery could well be reframed as recovering the person; for isn’t that what treatment is ultimately about? At Wellspring, a multi-service mental health agency in Bethlehem, Connecticut, we base our relational approach to treatment and education on a multi-dimensional concept of...
-
Recovery from Mental Illness: Consumer Readiness as a Driving Force
In this account, I’m sharing our experience at The Bridge, the New York City non-profit mental health rehabilitation agency, to illustrate the key role that consumers play in moving service providers to a recovery/rehabilitation orientation. The Bridge was created in 1954 by a group of...
-
Northern Westchester Recovery Network in Action
The Mental Health Association of Westchester County, Inc. has established an exciting cutting-edge service known as the Northern Westchester Recovery Network (NWRN) with initial focus on the communities of Peekskill, Ossining, and Mohegan Lake, New York. NWRN is funded by the Office of Mental...
-
How Can We Fight the Prejudice and Discrimination of Psychiatric Labels?
Raptly watching President Obama’s inaugural address on January 21, I was struck by his acknowledgement – on equal terms – of three stunning civil rights milestones: Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall. The Stonewall Inn, of course, is the gay bar where, in 1969, a police raid sparked several...
-
A Handshake that Inspired a Recovery: The History and Future of Mental Health News
Let me tell you a true story about a simple handshake that saved the life of a young man from New York suffering with mental illness. The year was 1987 and he was 38 years old. He had always been a happy and productive person throughout his entire life. He had earned a master’s degree and...
-
Ascent into Love: Surviving Schizophrenia
Every person needs to be touched, supported and nurtured by the environment in which they live in order to grow. The earth’s immense force of gravity, whether physical or psychological, is too much for us to bear alone. Each of us takes a turn at holding each other’s weight, much like the spine...
