The Recovering Life: January 2007

Friday, January 19, 2007

The Recovery Council Part Two

Back from Break:
The next presentation is by Cheryl Flowers, a Native American from the Soo tribe of Chippewa Indians, in the Upper Peninsula. Cheryl described, and passed around, a personal medicine wheel, a symbol of focus and inclusion.

Cheryl discussed the importance and meaning of color to the Three Fires (Ottowa, Potowatomi, and Chippewa). All parts of life are part of the Circle of Life, and meaning arises within this framework of relationships. "What goes around, comes around".

Potowatomi tribe: Maintainers of the sacred fire
Ottowa tribe: Traders
Chippewa tribe: Ceremonial people

Clans have responsible for various aspects of tribal dynamic. Cheryl has reconnected with her traditions, and has found herself living out a personal destiny and her recovery. She discussed the various ways the Federal Government has instituted to dilute and destroy tribal integrity. As casinos have entered this complex mix of traditions and values, young people can lose their way, exploited by drug dealers and gangs.

When individuals go to urban areas, they can also become lost. The tribes have succeeded in dealing partially with this disintegration by altering the general practice of adoption of native children. Michigan tribes created Native American foster homes.

One of the extensions of the symbol of the Circle of Life is their flexible notion of the extended family, beyond blood ties, even tribal histories. Cheryl talked about the way traditional pow-wows helped to reestablish her understanding of her traditions and the cultural support that the extended family can provide. "You get what you need, not what you want".

Cheryl believes that confidentiality can eliminate the possibility of real support from the extended family. She believes that everyone has culture and is diverse.

She also has a mission to bring the recovery movement to her tribe.

More later.

At the January 19, 2007 Recovery Council Meeting

I am at the Lansing Community College West Campus at the January meeting of the Recovery Council. We are struggling with the language on our Vision, Mission, Values statement. it is difficult to be defining our movement, even though we all share an intuitive understanding what recovery is. We finished the first part of the document and will take up more of it at the next meeting. March 16, 2007, 9-3 at the LCC West Campus.

Sandy Lindsey discussed and presented a DVD on Recovery, called 1 in 5. We saw the DVD, but there are streaming video versions of 30 and 15 minutes. The DVD has interviews with consumers, advocates, and professionals about how different the recovery movement views life possibilities.

A workbook is also available at the site.

More later.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Republican And Democratic Voters Overwhelmingly Support Fair Mental Health Insurance Coverage

The vast majority of Americans (89%), including Democrats, Republicans, managers and employees, want to end insurance discrimination against people with mental health needs in this country, according to a new survey by Mental Health America (formerly known as the National Mental Health Association).

People With Mental Health Disabilities Fare Worse In Discrimination Lawsuits

Sixteen years after Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with psychiatric disabilities are faring worse in court cases against employers for discrimination than are people with physical disabilities, researchers have found in a national study.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

A New Concept of Mental Health

The recovery movement is truly a reform in the making. Like the System of Care movement for parents of children and youth with mental health issues, and adult family advocacy groups like the National Alliance for Mental Illness, the recovery movement was born after years of consumer frustration with mental health services. A maturing adult consumer movement began to articulate the word recovery. This concept gained momentum as we began to see more consumers demand a say in how the mental health systems of our country were organized. As part of this movement consumers became trained to deliver peer support services in mental health system.
Most recently the recovery movement has begun to embrace children, youth and their families.

Go down the page to find the article.

Mentally ill woman wins in top court

OUTDATED DIAGNOSIS: Angela Williams lost her newborn son based on bipolar disorder.

FAILURE TO BOND? She says she had no chance to connect with boy; state's high court agrees.

JEFFERSON CITY — Even though the courts had ruled that Angela Williams' mental condition made her unfit to parent her son, she kept a bedroom for the absent child.

As her son grew older, she dismantled an unused crib and replaced it with an unused toddler bed. On Christmas and birthdays, she's never stopped buying toys.

"My life has been on hold waiting for Christopher," she said.

On Tuesday, the state's highest court took a key step toward reuniting the mother and child, in what is considered a significant ruling for the rights of mentally ill parents.

Monday, January 8, 2007

Mark Miller pleaded for help.

Mark Miller never hid his intent to commit suicide.

Not when he entered West Central Georgia Regional Hospital in June 2002. "Threatening to hang self," a staff member at the state mental facility in Columbus scrawled in Miller's medical records.

Not when the hospital completed his psychological examination about two weeks later. A physician noted, "Client stated he did not feel like living."

And not when hospital workers discussed his treatment plan in the days before his scheduled discharge. Miller, a staff member wrote, "cannot offer a reason to live."

Friday, January 5, 2007

Ohio, New York Governors Sign Mental Health Parity Bills

The governors of Ohio and New York recently signed into law mental health parity bills. Summaries of the news coverage appear below.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

New Oregon law will require parity in mental health coverage

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A new Oregon law kicks in as of 2007, requiring health insurance plans throughout the state to extend the same coverage to mental illnesses as they do to physical ones.

The new law affects group health plans that collectively insure more than a million Oregonians, but excludes federal workers, individual health insurance policies and people on Medicare or Medicaid, who already have parity.

Advocacy Unlimited of Conneticut

This page presents links to other sites that can be of assistance to persons in recovery from psychiatric disabilities, or that can assist you in obtaining information about mental health issues.

Stories From Recovery Wisconsin

By C. Algar
We agreed that self-expression (art) and “recovery” are inevitably intertwined but neither is necessary for the other to take place.

And many other stories...

Self-Determination

"Many of us who have used mental health services have been told what we ‘have,’ how ‘it’ will be treated and how we must think about arranging our lives around this thing.

"We have then begun to see our lives as a series of problems or ‘symptoms’ and we have forgotten that there might be other ways to interpret our experiences."

- Shery Mead

When you are faced with a mental illness, life is often confusing, and it can be difficult to focus on the idea of recovery. When we hear these are chronic illnesses, we begin to think only of our deficits and losses. Thoughts of recovery can seem far away or even impossible to us, those who treat us, and those who care about us.

But there’s a different way of looking at mental illnesses now, a vision focusing on recovery and self-determination, emphasizing the importance of peer support and focusing on the person with the mental illness, supporting and building on their dreams and desires. There’s a growing recognition, supported by increasing amounts of research, that recovery is possible when consumers are an integral part of their own treatment and support systems.

The Recovering Life