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Helping My Fellow Consumers in Their Recovery
When I was diagnosed with depression, I was devastated. I thought that this could not be happening. However, I accepted it. I knew that if I could just keep holding on, this too would pass. Somehow, I knew that I would get better. I enlisted into a partnership with a great psychiatrist, took...
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How About Recovery for People with Psychiatric Disabilities in Long-term Care?
Happily, the concept of “recovery” has become a powerful force in the mental health system. We talk now about a “recovery-oriented system” and “recovery-oriented services.” In doing so we express our sense of hope—our conviction—that people with serious, long-term psychiatric...
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Stigma and Recovery: New Approaches to Old Challenges
Thomas R. Insel, MD stated, “Psychiatry is the only part of medicine where there is actually greater stigma for receiving treatment for these illnesses than for having them” (Insel, NIMH Report 2006). There are many aspects to the stigma surrounding mental illness. It manifests itself as a...
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Recovery: A Participant in Life
Living one’s own life: a rather simple concept but somehow thrown on the back burner. Somewhere along the path in this journey of mental illness, we lose ourselves. Prior to the onset of my mental illness—well into adulthood—I was someone: a daughter, an educated woman, a teacher, a wife, a...
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Baltic Street in NYC Shows the Power of Peer Support
The power of peer-led mental health services is at work at Baltic Street AEH in New York City, and is making a real difference. Baltic’s mission is to achieve full social inclusion for all persons living with mental illness. Its integrated network encompasses vocational, educational, social and...
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Quality Life Promotes Recovery
What may have been lost and left out in discussions on mental health treatment has been the importance of “a quality of life” as a tool of mental health treatment. What I have become aware of is the need for consumers to live at a standard that is not separate from what he/she sees as preferred...
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Peer Run Services Playing Pivotal Roles in Promoting Health, Recovery and Full Citizenship
In the words of one of our greatest peer support leaders Shery Mead, “In peer support we come together with the intention of changing our patterns, getting out of ‘stuck’ places, building relationships that are respectful, mutually responsible and potentially mutually transforming. We...
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Where Do We Go from Here? Follow-Up Care from Psychiatric Hospitalization
Psychiatric hospitalization is a disruptive event for any individual, especially for a child and family. However, brief the hospital stay – and stays are very brief these days – the person, the child, and the family has to cope with medications, restoring relationships, making an awkward and...
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VNSW Mental Health Home Care Program: Transitioning Back Home Following Hospitalization
It is becoming increasingly understood and appreciated just how much healing and comfort extend beyond physical well-being. There is a decided mental well-being component as well, recognized by Visiting Nurse Services in Westchester (VNSW), the White Plains-based home health care agency that...
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Recovery Can Begin on The Inpatient Psychiatric Hospital Unit
Post discharge services start the day a person is admitted to an inpatient unit. Usually, when people stay for a few days in the hospital, staff focuses mainly on medication issues. Many studies of people suffering from severe mental illnesses show an association between non-adherence to medication...
