Peer Support

This week we launched PeerRespite.net, a website dedicated to information and resources regarding peer respites in the U.S. As part of the initiative, recruitment is open for the 2015 Peer Respites Essential Features Survey.

-Hurricane Irene seems to have left some community-based approaches to psychiatric care in its wake.

I remember clearly thinking, “I’m done. I’m not putting myself through this again.” I wasn’t going to settle for the side effects of a marginally better than placebo treatment again. Here is a brief look into my rollercoaster journey of recovery, returning to work, having my trauma re-triggered, finding a way through, and finally living well.

Minn Post did a feature story last week on Vail Place, an alternative mental health treatment center run on a community “clubhouse” model where the nearly 900 members and staff work side by side to run the center’s activities. Vail Place was founded in Hopkins, Minnesota in the early eighties by mental health activists and family members as a community for psychosocial rehabilitation. “The work isn’t therapy,” a member explains. “It’s growth. It’s ‘I cans’ rather than ‘I can'ts.’ And that’s important for mental health and survival.”

Chelsea Roff is the Founder and Director of Eat Breathe Thrive (EBT), a non-profit with an inspired mission to bring yoga, mindfulness, and community support to people struggling with negative body image and disordered eating. I reached out to Chelsea to learn more about her life and organization, which she writes, “…is like AA for people with food and body image issues, plus yoga and meditation.” Chelsea shared her journey from life as a patient to yogi, author, and innovative community organizer. With her permission, you can find this interview below.

Introductory arts courses at Open Arts Essex show improvements in mental well-being and social inclusion for individuals with mental health challenges.

Interviews with psychosocially oriented psychologists demonstrate their experiences of discomfort with the hegemony of the medical model in their place of work and the conflicts that arise when they attempt to provide alternatives.

From Sapiens: Researchers are increasingly recognizing the role that social and environmental factors, including childhood abuse, stressful events, and poverty, play in the development of...

We had built relationships with provider and peer organizations and NAMI. We had learned how to interface with the system and share the peer perspective. Ultimately, our relationships saved us. We had worked to start our own organization with the same providers who now were in position to step forward in our defense.

“The point, overall, is that given the dizzying array of possible factors at work here, it’s much too pat a story to say that kids are getting more 'fragile' as a result of some cultural bugaboo,” Jesse Singal writes in response to the flurry of recent think pieces decrying the weakened resolve of today's college students.

From Nautilus: Numerous research studies demonstrate the strong correlation between social isolation and significant emotional and physical health risks. The pain of loneliness can serve...

From YES! Magazine: Lament singing, an ancient tradition once observed for spiritual purposes during funerals, weddings, and times of war, is now seeing a revival in...

From The Atlantic: According to author Dan Buettner, who studies the healthiest people in the world, improving our surrounding environment has a much greater impact...

If I had a clinical problem, why was something as ancient and simple as meditation helping me? And if normal positive human habits could be so profoundly useful, why the heck was the field marketing pills and “clinical” coping mechanisms to me instead? This frustration helped me jump ship from the medical mindset and hop into the world of humanity.

From The Guardian: The oldest asylum in the Balkans has now been transformed into an unlocked mental health center. The patients have begun living in...

The Rutland Herald uses a recent study about online "mental illness peer support" as an opening to interview people in Vermont concerning what they...

Based on the Finnish Open Dialogue approach, the Parachute program is an alternative to current health care systems where a team of health care workers collaborate with families and those in distress to develop a path to recovery. The success of Parachute is now spurring the development of similar programs in the UK.

Mental Health Europe and the British Psychological Society are looking for signatories to a letter endorsing the recent United Nations Special Rapporteur's report on...

A review of mental health anti-stigma campaigns finds psychosocial models are effective in reducing stigma, while biogenetic models often worsen attitudes.

Results from two meta-analyses reveal shortcomings with the growth mindset theory as applied in schools.

In this piece for The Guardian, Joy Hibbins describes how her experiences of powerlessness as a mental health service user led her to start Suicide...

From Mail & Guardian: Colonialism today is more entrenched in our society than it ever has been in the past, and traditional psychology and mental...

In this piece for the Feminist Current, Tove Happonen argues that the therapy model pathologizes women's responses to systemic injustice, aiming to change their emotional reactions...

From The Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care: The Hearing Voices Research and Development Fund has been awarded a $300,000 grant to expand their...

Loneliness was found to both predict and be reinforced by severe common mental disorders.