Spirituality and Recovery from Mental Disorders

LESSON 7
Peer Counseling and Consumer-run Programs

Peer Counseling

Peer counseling utilizes consumers to provide vital services during recovery. It is a movement that is affecting mental health programs throughout the USA and internationally.

Listen to this program on An Educated Consumer

In this program, Dr. Peter Kramer interviews guests including Moe Armstrong, who has schizophrenia and who talks about his experiences with the mental health system in the 1960s. Also:
Larry Fricks, who has bipolar disorder and who started a movement of people in recovery from mental illness. He now directs consumer relations and recovery for the state of Georgia.
Eric Elbogen, Duke University researcher who studies psychiatric advance directives that allow people to give doctors instructions and plan for their own treatment.
Larry Davidson, Yale University Researcher
Charles Barber’s memoir, Songs from the Black Chair, in which he struggles as a social worker about whether to divulge his own experience with obsessive compulsive disorder.
Cynthia Folcarelli, executive vice president of the National Mental Health Association
Charles Konigsberg, director of the Campaign for Mental Health Reform.

QUIZ EXERCISE 14: According to the web site of Georgia Peer Specialist Training and Certification, A natural outgrowth of the 1999 Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health has been the realization of the value of peer-to-peer support in the acquisition of real recovery. [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

 

QUIZ EXERCISE 15: On Moe Armstrong's Peer Educators Web Site, he states that he was one of the first people with schizophrenia to work as mental health professional. [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

The California Institute for Mental Health published a report on best practices in hiring consumers as mental health workers. Read the Executive Summary on pages 5-8
Successful Employment of Consumers in the Public Mental Health Workforce

 

QUIZ EXERCISE 16: According to the recommendations in the Executive Summary, Preparing the existing mental health workforce before pro-actively hiring consumers is a waste of time. [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

Training of Consumers to Work in the Mental Health Field.
This powerpoint from the California Institute for Mental Health shows what is involved in successful peer counseling programs.

QUIZ EXERCISE 17: Peer counselors are always volunteers who do not have paid positions in mental health [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

Consumer-run Programs

Founded in 1948, Fountain House is a professional self-help program, operated by people recovering from mental problems, in collaboration with a highly professional and caring staff. The emphasis at Fountain House is on relationships – member to member, and member to staff. Members engage with each other to regain their productivity and self-confidence, resume their lives, and re-enter society. They take part, as well, in promoting their rights, and in erasing the stigma that often separates them from their neighbors.

QUIZ EXERCISE 18: Fountain House is dedicated to the recovery of men only. [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

Fountain house has been a model of compassionate care that has been emulated internationally. The International Center for Clubhouse Development is a global network creating opportunities for people living with mental illness to be respected members of society.

Advanced Directives

Advanced directives has emerged as a way for people to plan ahead for mental health treatment they might want to receive if they are in a crisis and are unable to communicate for themselves or make voluntary decisions.
One tool is called an Advance Instruction for Mental Health Treatment. This document allows a person to write down instructions to give their clinicians if they are in a crisis and cannot make their own mental health treatment decisions.

QUIZ EXERCISE 19: Advance Directives for Mental Health Treatment asks the person to explicitly say which medication(s) he or she would consent to take. [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

 

QUIZ EXERCISE 20: Advance Directives for Mental Health Treatment do not ask the person to explicitly say which medication(s) he or she does not want to take. [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

A second tool is called a Health Care Power of Attorney (used to appoint a Health Care Agent). A Health Care Agent is someone who you trust and you would like to make decisions for you during a mental health crisis. Note such directives should be notarized.

QUIZ EXERCISE 21: At the Duke University Psychiatric Advance Directives web site, The Psychiatric Advance Instructions Toolkit is the same for Consumers, Clinicians, and Family. [True/False] Record your answers for later insertion into the Quiz.

 

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Audio	Website	Document	Quiz