Our
blog, Beyond Serendipity, came about as the result of The Main Place,
a consumer operated mental health recovery center located in Licking
and Knox Counties in Ohio, experience with helping thousands
consumers with their recovery. We define recovery as a deeply
personal process over overcoming the impact of a psychiatric
disability despite its continued presence. Most of our members
struggled with having to figure out how to recover on their own, and
for most, the process involved having to ‘reinvent that wheel’
for themselves.
Over
the past twenty-five TMP has sought to increase the likely hood that
persons experiencing serious and persistent mental illness could and
would recover. First we asked, what do people need in order to
recover? In focus groups, surveys, and by tracking what consumers
were working on in their recovery, the top four unmet needs, in
order, were the same every year: Peer and Family Support, Work or
Meaningful Activity, Access to Resources and Clinical Care.
Research
funded by the Ohio Department of Mental Health had shown that the
degree to which consumers felt their needs were being met correlated
most with the likelihood they would recover. So combining this
knowledge and information TMP has sought to insure that members do
recover, and to improve upon ‘serendipity’ as the means by which
we recover. Beyond Serendipity will be a collection of stories from
peer specialists, members and other interested parties, about their
observations and experiences in achieving and facilitating Recovery.
