[NYAPRS Enews] Community College Offers Course on Mental Health Recovery

[Harvey Rosenthal]

NYAPRS Note: Note that the class's teacher is Leroy Spaniol, who was a long time associate of Dr. Bill Anthony and a national leader on rehabilitation and recovery at Boston University's Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. 

 

Students Get Support For Recovery From Mental Illness In A Classroom Setting

By Jonathan Burke  Cape Cod Times January 28, 2010

Beginning Feb. 6, more than a dozen students will crack their books at the Recovery Education Center, located at - but not affiliated with - Cape Cod Community College. Their goal: the recovery of lost and forgotten dreams.

The course, sponsored by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Cape Cod chapter, will teach them to retake what mental illness and, in some respects, society have taken away - hope.

Students with mental illness will sit in the classroom 2½ hours per week for 12 weeks. They will have homework and there is a textbook. They will learn how to recover from their illness.

The course teaches life skills, such as communication and listening, symptom mitigation, and ways to understand mental illness.

Coping mechanisms are another imperative. Stress is a common emotion for everyone and it is intensified by mental illness. If voices or utter despair strikes, a person needs to be able to recover his or her equanimity. The class teaches people to step back and identify what is causing the stress and then find a solution.

Mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, anxiety and depression, bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorders, borderline personality disorder and others throw a wrench into people's lives. Society often makes it worse by stigmatizing people with mental illness.

"Within two weeks, I lost my job "¦ the voices were so bad," says Jon of Hyannis, a 48-year-old man with schizophrenia. Jon, who does not wish to have his last name published, says he lost 20 years to his illness.

It was the same story for Louise, 42, of Orleans, who also asked not to have her last name published. Louise lost her job because of paranoia caused by a schizoaffective disorder.

"I'd be getting involved with what the person thinks of me, and not my work," she says. It took five years after her illness struck, she says, before she was back on her feet.

What the illness does not trample, society does.

"It's basically prejudice and discrimination," says Dr. LeRoy Spaniol, former head of NAMI Cape Cod and a rehabilitation counselor who formerly lived in Wellfleet but now resides in

West Hartford, Conn. "It leaves people's feelings discounted and dismissed, as if they're not important. It's devastating - the sense of who they are as a person, the impossibility to have normal roles of society. They're looked upon as not having the ability."

Mental illness and stigma, in effect, scuttle the lives of those who are sick. "They lose the mainstream of life. So they feel stuck and don't feel as though they have life skills to move on again," says Spaniol.

Life comes to a screeching halt.

"All of sudden, life is about doctors' appointments and medications and maybe hospitalizations. If you were in college, your dreams are dashed," says Amy Kinney, instructor for the last two classes. A former Eastham resident, she now lives in Cranston, R.I.

Spaniol is the architect of the Recovery Education Center. One of eight children - two of whom dealt with schizophrenia and three with bipolar disorder - Spaniol has focused on enabling people to recover and to counter the stigma of mental illness.

"The expectations from society are very low, expecting people to be primarily maintained, medicated and housed. Not to have a life. That expectation is still very prevalent," says Spaniol.

The classroom was a natural place to work from for Spaniol, an educator and professor at Boston University for 30 years. Education is normalizing, he says, and that, in itself, teaches people to recover. Spaniol started the first Recovery Education Center in the country at Boston University 15 years ago.

"I knew from my own history that students would learn. Very often, they begin naive and do not know what they want. Very often they end with a clearer idea - confidence, skills." he says.

At the root of recovery from mental illness is hope. Society often turns people into patients and some may come to believe their dreams are not obtainable.

Kinney says people talk frankly about cancer. They ask for prayers from others. It is an open topic. But when it comes to mental illness, people frequently button up.

The lack of role models perpetuates the stigma.

Twenty years ago, says Spaniol, a person in public in a wheelchair was practically unheard of. Now, it is common. Those people are role models. People living with mental illness are needed as role models.

"Hope is really vital," says Spaniol.

Recovery is possible.

"Primarily the course objective (is) to help people who have identified themselves as patients to identify as something more than that - to see themselves as a student," says Kinney. She herself suffers from chronic depression and anxiety disorder.

The courses have been successful.

"I want to go back to work. I see myself jumping over hurdles that are higher and higher and higher," says Louise.

Keeping a journal in the course taught Louise to organize and connect her thoughts, and that has spilled over to her speech. She now expresses herself where before, she says, her emotions were bottled up.

The concept of the course is that you learn recovery is real, says Jon.

"You learn about recovery. About different phases and what works best for you. I learned better strategies and coping skills. Better communication skills," he says..

Sitting in a classroom is normalizing, says Spaniol.

"They have to show up and sit at a desk with pad of paper and pencil. Already that is so different than what they have been accustomed to "¦ They are no longer in the psych wing," says Kinney.

Jon still hears voices sometimes and feels paranoia. But he has learned ways to handle these symptoms from the course. "When I'm having a bad day now, when I'm hearing a lot of voices or hearing something from the TV, I go upstairs and meditate or listen to music."

For Louise, "the camaraderie of the other people, feeling like we're all in together" has been beneficial. "The supporting of each other and being transparent, it's given me a feeling of reinforcement."

The textbooks include stories of people who have recovered from mental illness. Kinney asks her students to read the stories and compare their experience with the experience of those in the stories. This helps people formulate and articulate thoughts. These skills can be depleted when a life revolves around therapy.

For Jon, the class provided the formula for pursuing life. The class defined the stages of recovery - shock and denial, depression, despair and anger, acceptance and hope, coping and advocacy, and empowerment. "It gives you the rationale," he says.

Jonathan Burke is a writer and volunteers for NAMI on consumer issues.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100128/LIFE/1280301 

 

 

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