hat was a journey in its self over the past seven weeks. For me, it came full circle and the main concepts that stuck were the importance of instilling hope in the client, letting them drive the service and that they are a powerful tool in recovery. We use scenarios as examples all the time, and the media uses people, why not start letting the people going through the recovery choose their models and people to support them. 
I believe I can continue advocating for people rights as well as sharing my knowledge of this course and through my gained experiences to better the recovery journey for others. I hope that those of us that have enjoyed these materials and gleaned some sense of recovery from it can keep it, that we do not enter into a system that will challenge our boundaries or our treatment ideas with clients. I hope we all get to work for a program as forward-thinking as we are and that will only strengthen our access to the system and the helping professions. 
-Sean K

Libby Nilsson (Elizabeth) is UNKNOWN!!!

Final thoughts

This course created more questions for me than it was able to supply answers. However, that is not a bad thing, it just means it has sparked my curiosity for the future of mental health care system. What it has reminded me is that where the mental health care system started and the possibilities we get to create as professionals in this field. The final review has provided me the acknowledgment of the greenness of my journey in the recovery field but reminds me I get to continue to learn and grow. My biggest take away is that recovery is multidimensional almost an entity of itself. It infiltrates many aspects of our lives and everyone in someway is recovering. Each week provided an opportunity to link principles of recovery into my life through additional research and implementing daily interventions. This course has allowed me to be excited about the evolution of recovery and help contribute to a positive progression.

Final Thoughts

In my current work as a children's case manager I felt I had a solid foundation on many aspects of recovery. This course gave me so much inspiration how to continue to support individuals with mental health needs and challenge me to think deeper about how incredibly crucial it is to have the client's involvement every step of the way during treatment.

A few aspects of the course stuck out to me. The first aspect, in the beginning of the course, which I will carry with me is Particia Deegan speaking about how individuals are "experts in their journey of recovery." This statement really challenged me to take a good look at if my practice is client focused and I hope to carry this on as I continue in social work.

Another piece of insight I will carry with me is of Judi Chamberlain's narrative when she spoke about her time in a psychiatric hospital. Judi notes towards the article, "Recovery is for everyone." This part really spoke to me. I hope to continue to remember this piece not throughout my time as a social worker but as an advocate as well and to challenge any person who does not think recovery is for everyone.

This class definitely greatly elevated the foundation I had for client centered recovery.

(published by Jenn Luja)

Final Thoughts

My major take away from this course that there is hope. I don't mean this in a cheesy, fluffy kind of way. I mean it in a gritty, genuine sense. The mental health profession has come so far, and it seems to me that while we have so much farther to go, there is true progress being made. I ended my final review thinking about Daniel Fisher's thoughts about empowerment in regard to treatment for mental illness. What a concept it is that recovery is not merely stabilizing people so that they can learn to cope with their symptoms, but rather it is recovering in full from the disease itself. I must admit that this idea challenges me, because I have seen mental health symptoms seem pervasive and long lasting. But what a gift it is to begin a client's treatment with the belief that they can and will get better. This, to me, is hope.

I liked this class because it presented ideas that made me feel intrigued and excited to continue on in my career as a social worker. I want to bring this sort of radical hope presented by Addams, Pinel, Pussin, Deegan, Fisher, Karon, and so many more. It makes me feel lucky to know that I have chosen a profession in which I can help someone regain their power in their own life. It also makes me happy to think that I can have some part in dismantling the old, as well. The humans that I will work with in the future deserve more than the old way of doing things. Instead, I will continue to hope.

Final Review/Thoughts

             I am completing this course with a more well-rounded and in-depth understanding of the principles of recovery and my role in supporting recovery as a future mental health care professional. With a clearer and more understanding of the historical forces at work, I feel that I am better equipped to both comprehend and combat forces that work against the recovery movement.

            While completing the Final Review/Exam, I focused on connecting what I learned within each module to the principle of recovery. This allowed me to reflect on multiple principles and think through ways that I would be able to incorporate the principles into my future work. The principle of recovery that sticks out to me the most as a big “take away” from this course is “Recovery is person-driven.” This principle suggests that, “individuals optimize their autonomy and independence to the greatest extent possible by leading, controlling, and exercising choice over the services and supports that assist their recovery and resilience” (SAMHSA). Shery Mead and Mary Ellen Copeland write in What Recovery Means to Us (2000) that, “all people grow through taking positive risks.” It is my job as a (future) practitioner to support clients to take positive risks that provide the opportunity for growth.

            During this course I also had the opportunity to reflect on personal boundaries in the context of a healing relationship and what that will look like for me as a professional in the future. How can we support people with human connection while still maintaining ethical boundaries? I look forward to continuing the conversations that have been started in this class, and to learning more about how to incorporate the recovery principles into my work in the future.  

Final Thoughts

Like others that have already posted this week, I also feel it is difficult to pick just one topic that I was most impacted by. I think after looking back through the modules what stands out to me the most is the overall meaning of this class. It seems that in almost every other class I have taken related to the field of rehabilitation, I am always taught to see the positives in any situation or topic. We are always looking at the good of the field and the good of the services being provided. I enjoy that because I like to think that I am a glass half full type of person, however, I thought it was really unique and rewarding to be asked to challenge things for a change. We were asked many times over the past seven weeks to question the way we approach recovery, and I have learned a lot by doing this. Sometimes it is actually helpful to see examples of what not to do in order to better learn what to do right moving forward. Some of the articles like the Karon (2007) article about hallucinations I found fascinating and will for sure change the way I view certain types of mental illnesses like schizophrenia. The Bellevue film was moving as well, learning about the day to day life for patients at the hospital will stay will me as I move on from this class. Sometimes people are literally asking for better help like the man who kept saying "the medications don't work here, nothing works here, I hate this place" I will take away how important it is to simply listen to people rather than premake judgments about them and move on. Another general thing that I will take away from this course is learning that it is actually ok to question our field.. It seems taboo to question the field that we are all passionate about, however, this class has helped me learn that having these conversations is how we grow as better counselors, and how our field progresses towards a better future. Overall the class was quite an eye-opening journey for me.

Final Review/Thoughts

As this was my final class of my Masters degree program, I went into it with an open mind and a belief that this class would finish all the learning that I would need to have in order to continue with my career. However, after taking this class, I realized that learning cannot stop here simply because the program is done. Throughout this program, I have been asked to question many topics and challenge more ideas than I was prepared to. This class, however, took that to a new level. I found myself questioning assumptions that I have always held, truths I believed I had been told, and it left me with new suspicions that I want to explore on my own. My top "take away" from this course is that I can never pass judgement on any other person's situation, and that I must always fight for my clients' rights to be as they are and change as they see fit. I had never considered how so much of my education around human behavior was very rigid.

Walking away from this course, I feel empowered to assist my clients moving forward. I feel as though I can move forward as a better counselor because I have learned these lessons. I walk away with a renewed sense of urgency to help create a positive change. Our history has no place repeating itself when it comes to mental illness and mental health, and I am grateful to have a platform as a counselor to advocate for my clients to see that it doesn't. In the future, I look forward to learning more on my own so that I can continue to grow and support my clients in the ways they would benefit from.

(Kaitlynn Littlefield)

Final Takeaway

Throughout reviewing all of the modules we looked at through the class, I found many to be controversial, empowering, and eye opening. While many of the modules had profound impacts on the movement of the recovery model, one of my favorites is the concept of mind and body.

Throughout history, professionals and researchers have debated on whether the mind and body should be viewed as one, or as two separate entities. I think it can be both. I think we, as professionals, can view each mental health symptom and concern and each medical symptom and concern as independent components while viewing the person as a whole. Viewing a person as a whole allows professionals to holistically address all areas of their lives. This also allows for an outlook into a persons life and how each independent component could be contributing to another.

Lastly, if professionals chose not to view the mind and body as a whole, they could miss critical puzzle pieces into who a person truly is. In total, this movement has helped shape and further the recovery movement by providing a holistic view while working with a client who is seeking a state of recovery.

Thoughts after Final Exam

Now that I have completed the final exam for this class and have been reviewing the modules all week, I am finding it hard to pick just one concept that sticks out the most to me. In some ways, all of the concepts intertwine with each other. Deinstitutionalization was such a life altering change for people to go through and I believe it really started the beginning of the recovery movement. Society began to look at the way people were being treated in the mental institutions and started to realize that it wasn't right and that there were other options. Since everyone was transitioned to living in the community, I think the other key concept from these modules is the importance of community programs that enable people to live independently in their communities. Without these programs in place, people would not have the hope or courage to live independently or in some cases, learn the skills to be able to live independently. I also think peer support is another major concept in recovery and one that appears to be gaining more recognition in community mental health services over the past several years. I have gained a lot of useful knowledge from these modules and at times, it has been a humbling reminder of how recovery began but has also provided an optimistic view into the future as people continue to advocate for changes to be made in mental health care.

Final

When I first began HCE 619, I was not sure if the content would be to hard or not for me to comprehend. Going from bachelor level classes to master-level classes can be intimidating. I am also a social work major, so I was not sure if the content would be beneficial to my career. I am so happy I choose to take HCE 619 as an elective I have learned so much from the seven weeks of participating in a discussion board or reading through content. The biggest take away from these seven weeks is that people who have a mental illness can recover. Before taking HCE 619, I had never heard a mental health professional utter the words recovery. Recovery for a person who has a mental illness may not be in the same context as a person who has got into an accident. Recovery in the mental health profession means to be in control of your mental illness and being an active member of the community. Having a life is possible for someone who has a mental illness. It does not limit their ability to have the life they dreamed they would have. I plan to help my patients understand that recovery is possible, and they can have a life even with a mental illness. When working with children in the past, I have told them their mental illness is their superpower, and I plan to do the same with adults. People with mental illness have been hidden away and oppressed for so long it is their time to rise to the occasion and live. 

There but by the grace of God go I....

Though in some circles I am Dr. / Professor Barrett, with a Ph.D., there are other contexts where I hold highly stigmatized statuses. In a medical context, I am a person with psychiatric disability, and even more stigmatized, I am a person who has lyme disease...also known as a "lyme loonie."

Because of my life experience, I feel deeply about our history, the lives of people with MI, and the origins of recovery movement within psychiatric rehabilitation. I teach because I think it is important to expose providers to a different way of thinking, or a perspective they may not have considered. No approach or theoretical orientation will apply in every situation (e.g., therapeutic use of hallucinations), but as a person who has skin in this psychiatric game, I also feel strongly that some approaches are more consistent with recovery than others.

When I am symptomatic, I want someone to listen and validate my experience. I want to feel emotionally safe.  I want encouragement, and to be reminded of all the things I have made it through in the past. I want to be reminded that I have the ability to figure it out, whatever "it" is. I need to know that I have value.

What I don't want: judgement, use of a skeptical or scolding tone, being told what to do, being told the obvious (e.g., you would feel better if you lost weight), being mocked and/or humiliated, being physically controlled, and being asked if I've taken my medication (!). The surest way to escalate my agitation is to tell me to "calm down," which in my estimation, is the ultimate invalidating statement. Under certain circumstances, that response may cause me to behave aggressively, or lash out in anger. What happens then? My fate as a person with mental illness is sealed. I am now labelled a problem, "out of control," and potentially, a victim of the "goon squad" or worse. (Goon squad is a group of nurses who restrain someone and administer PRN tranquilizers to chemically control a person).

For example, think of the young man at the Judge Rotenberg center being shocked remotely while prone and in a 5-point restraint.VIDEO HERE Think of Natasha McKenna, naked, strapped to a restraint chair, in a jail cell. Ten men in hazmat suits and gas masks approach her to move her to another facility, and they end up killing her. We can pat ourselves on the back about how far we've come in psychiatry, yet there are too many stories of my brothers and sisters suffering at the hands of providers. The officials responsible for Natasha's death felt so confident in the way they treated Natasha that they posted a 48 minute video of the incidents that led to her death. The official video of the incident is no longer on youtube. However, someone else posted a version...VIDEO HERE

How does this happen? What is the story these "providers" tell themselves? Why didn't anyone object at the time? What might be a better way, according to Shery Mead? Other recovery advocates? Answer these questions, feel free to post your own, and then reply to at least 2 of your classmates.

OUTPATIENT COMMITMENT - ASYLUM RECREATED IN COMMUNITY?

Above is the case FOR Outpatient Commitment, also known as Assisted Outpatient Treatment. Some folks who have been subjected to / received AOT agree with this approach AFTER they have completed it...however...its this "retrospective endorsement" enough to warrant coerced medication and ECT administration?  Is AOT just recreating asylum in the community? Answer these questions, and respond to one of your classmates' replies.

NO WAY! Therapeutic use of hallucinations?

(READ THE KARON ARTICLE ON Bb -- FOUND IN MODULE 9 -- THEN READ THIS AND POST)

Historically, people with schizophrenia have been told that their symptoms (i.e., hallucinations) need to be medicated away. "Once you are stable, then we can address your other needs..." This week, as we consider deinstitutionalization and people's rights in the community, often it is hallucinations that mark people as "other" or "crazy." Hallucinations can be very stigmatizing.

The recovery movement offers a different narrative. One does not have to be "stable" and "symptom-free" before recovery can begin, quite the opposite in fact. The community is a place one can recover and learn to advocate for rights. One can have symptoms and live well in the community.

What if hallucinations were recast as unconscious needs? What if people in the community, family, and support professionals viewed hallucinations not as an aberration, but as communication? We all have dreams, and some of us even dabble in dream interpretation....what if hallucinations are just waking dreams? What if a recurrent theme in a person's hallucinations means something? A need breaking through into wakeful consciousness?

If we viewed hallucinations as communication, would we still want to medicate them away? Would people be seen as "crazy" by providers and/or society at large?

Reply with your reaction to this premise (using hallucinations in therapy), and the questions above. Then reply to at least 2 of your classmates' posts.