By Nev Jones, Ph.D.

In an important and provocative study reported in this issue of Psychiatric Services, Cook and colleagues detail findings stemming from a rigorous and well-powered investigation of self-directed care for adults with serious mental illness living in Texas. The investigators found significant improvements in multiple key domains, including recovery, self-esteem, coping, autonomy support, and employment and education, all at no additional cost.

Full Article Here

Corinita Reyes has been knocking down barriers for most of her young life.
“My mother had me at age 17 and my biological father wanted a son, not a daughter, so I never met him,” Corinita said. “At the age of 10, many life changes happened at once from moving out of a community where I felt at home, to losing a father figure, to my mother’s boyfriend moving in with us and taking the role of my stepdad.”
Corinita, now 27, described how she struggled with these changes, but buried those struggles deep inside, sharing them with no one.

Full Article here

Register today for NAMI’s Ask the Expert Webinar: Skills You Can Use to Support a Loved One Experiencing Psychosis on Friday, March 22 from 4:00–5:30 p.m. EST

Speaker: Dr. Kate Hardy, Clin.Psych.D

This webinar will explain how Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis (CBTp) can effectively support loved ones experiencing psychosis. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis (CBTp) is an evidence-based intervention recommended as a complementary treatment for psychosis. This webinar will provide an overview of this therapy, discuss its key skills and explore how family members may draw upon these skills to support their loved one.

To read more and register here

If you missed it search for it in the NAMI Ask the Expert archive here

produced by Tom Jennings • Joaquin Sapien, In partnership with: ProPublica

Thousands of New Yorkers with severe mental illnesses won the chance to live independently in supported housing, following a 2014 federal court order. FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate what’s happened to people moved from adult homes into apartments and find more than two dozen cases in which the system failed, sometimes with deadly consequences.

See full film here

By Brian Miller, MD, PhD, MPH

Sleep disruption is often overlooked in treatment planning for patients with psychotic disorders. Recent research provides insights in this 5-question quiz.

Link to Full Article

What is it like hearing voices that others can't? For Jeannie Bass, hearing voices is her daily reality. The medical term is "auditory hallucinations." Jeannie is a leader in the Hearing Voices Movement, which aims to re-frame and destigmatize the extreme mental experiences that society labels as "crazy."

To see video see link

Written by Tori Rodriguez, MA, LPC

Historically, there have been low expectations for recovery in schizophrenia, which is associated with high rates of morbidity, mortality, and disability, as well as estimated annual economic costs of $155.7 billion and a 10% to 15% employment rate.1 In recent years, the focus of mental health policy and treatment for individuals with schizophrenia in the United States has shifted from stabilization of those with chronic disease to intervention in the early stages of the illness.

For more see the link

Written by Emily Knoll

Emily Knoll discusses the therapeutic interventions that have helped her come to terms with hearing voices

For more see the link

Written by Patricia E. Deegan Ph.D.

The word “recovery” has now stuck onto every sentence uttered in mental health services just so we’ll know just how “recovery oriented” everything and everyone has now become.
“Recovery oriented” is now an established branding but just what does that mean?
And what do they mean by “recovery”? 
In this article Pat Deegan shares at some length, her journey of how she started to struggle,  how things started to take a strange turn for her, then how others – adults – took charge and decided that she was ill and that they needed to take control of and set limits on her life.

For more see the link