(I am just learning how to update my own website, so this is kind of an experimental page. Please bear with me)

I have given a number of presentations using this title and am in the process exploring developing a book based on some of the premises from the presentation. Below are some exerts, thoughts, and works in progress.

Breaking the Cycle?

Why does it seem so few people with mental illness recover?

Why do people with mental illness seem so stuck?

What's the secret to recovery?

I've heard many questions over the years when I talk about mental illness. While I don't pretend to have miraculous answers I feel that sharing my thoughts, ideas, and experiences has helped people see things in a new way and even casued them to realize things they really already knew.

My idea for exploring the concept of breaking the cycle came from a question similar to the ones above. When talking about recovery, I was asked, "What's the silver bullet?" While I didn't have a good answer for that question and still don't today, it set me about exploring what it is that is important when recovering from mental illness.

What I saw when looking at people struggling with mental illness was that they often seemed to get stuck in some unheathy patterns or cycles. So, it seemed to me that an essential piece of recovery was breaking out of those patterns or free from those cycles.

Initially I looked at the cycle of repeated hospitalization. Hospitalization seemed to be a good place to start for a number of reasons. First, it seemed for people the lowest level of independence/ sel-sufficiency. It also seemed that the hospital should be a place where there could be a clear and productive look at the illness, diagnosis, and medications. One would think that hospitalization would be the first step to getting people on track.

What I found was that in most cases people looked at hospitalization not as a helpful thing but a disempowering and traumatic experince. <quote>

...

The next step in this process or cycle is discharge from the hospital. Here again there seems to often be many flaws in the system. The planning is often very limited and weak at best and communication is poor. People leave the hospital without a clear direction or goals, family memebers may or may not know when or where they are going, and the supports on the "outside" are often left in the dark as well. People are also rarely given the skills to deal w/ trying to reintegrate back into a society that still hold on to many dmaging stereotypes around mental illness. <quote>

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People who are not fortunate enough to afford private therapists and psychiatrists, or who need more intensive care are then generally connected to community mental health centers. The goal of community mental health centers is to keep people with mental illness "stable" in the community. the actual defintitions of what stable is or isn't may vary, but in laymans terms it means to keep them outof trouble. I once asked a case manager how she defined stable. She said, with only a small trace of sarcasm, that if a client was housed, taking their meds most of the time, only abusing substances some of the time, and out of jail - they were stable. This is not a quality of life we would accept for ourselves or our loved ones, but it is the standard of care for people with mental illness. The expectations of people with mental illness in community care are extremely low. I know because I work in the community care system and I was a client as well. Less than ten years ago, I spent my days at a day center or clubhouse as they were sometimes called; pacing, drinking bad coffee, and smoking cigarettes. I was living at a community care home at the time and I was expected to get up five days a week and ride a bus to the day center. I was expected to take my medications, follow the rules of the home and the center, and make a few appointments. Beyond that all I did was kill time. It may seem like an ideal thing to have all the time in the world, but when you have nothing to do with it, it's a living hell.

Fortunately, I had very supportive parents and grandparents who advocated for more out of the system.

(To be cont.)