Personally, I have found a focus on training to be very health giving and empowering. I have found the Institute of Psychiatry at Parramatta Sydney to be very helpful.  They have consumer oriented courses for $35 per course.  However NSW CAG lists countless wonderful conventions - oh yes with a cost often of over $700 dollars. That excludes all those with a diagnosis. How I would like to see an accepted practice of including consumers for minimal costs.  They are a resource that should be educated to help themselves and to help others.  They are literally being ignored when in truth they are the very people that have suffered so much personally that they are motivated to give their lives to helping others with true dedication.  Lizzie

I suspect that the whole concept of 'dependency' comes through from the old asylums where people were entrapped and thus dependent as they lived their whole lives in a very narrow environment.  Surely it is very hard to join solely with mainstream society as a person with a mental illness.  Most people have a family, they have full time work.  Yet we all know how hard it is for any person with a mental illness diagnosis to have a partner and a child, to have full time work.  Instead people are sidelined to the peripheries of society.  The drop in society is the hope, the place where the person with a diagnosis can find friendship and purpose.  Persons with a diagnosis are often not even welcomed into volunteer work.  My thought is that no one in their right mind wants to live on the utter poverty of a disability pension.  No one wants to be dependent, in any terms.  It is just so hard to be accepted into mainstream society.  Drop in centres are a wonderful way of finding community. Lizzie

In the addiction counseling world, "recovery" is the word most often associated with successful treatment. But we also hear that someone has "recovered" from alcoholism or that someone has just entered a "recovery program" for drug addiction. Those "in recovery" often refer to themselves as "recovering" from their addiction. So what do these variations on the word "recovery" really mean?

Well i greatly appreciate the organization who had planned these wonderful recovery with holding hand in hand with each other. Well in input of
my account i would like to state the some point or clubs should be established in the local areas which wold greatly help to uplift the awareness and increase the effects of the recovery as live status.

I have had an on-going illness for many years, and I wonder the people I have met along the way, most whom I’ll never see again, others whom I care not to know. Those I care not to know, I wonder if it’s my illness that intercedes in my caring about them and others I sigh about, sometimes in happiness, other times in sadness.
Realizing that having a mental illness can intercede in relationships is one step in knowing you will know what to do to ensure that you do not lose happiness and become overwhelmed by sorrow. This involves acceptance, which is a part of being happy and content. As the days and weeks and years go by, so do people and what should we have to say about it. If we accept change, we continue to grow. If we fight and struggle within against what should be of life, especially our own, harboring discontent, envy, jealousy and sorrow all our days, then we are struggling and within us this causes harm. In Recovery, admittance, belief, hope, faith and acceptance are principles which help us to grow spiritually; we become content through our understanding and we realize we are not alone in our journey.

Greetings from revboy in Albury NSW,

I AM A RECOVERER FROM SAD. viz. Seasonal Affective Disorder (my own prognosis.)

I have been THROUH THE MILL, of depression, at present I monitor and discipline my life carefully, and err on the safe side by continuing medication !

There are four main factors that I can attribute to helping me return ........ rereasonable

I am interested in people's experience of drop in centre programs supporting people living with mental illness and what has been helpful. I coordinate such a centre in a regional part of NSW that has a drop in part and also a Day to Day Living program (commonwealth government funding). Opinions vary about the role these centres play in people's recovery. Some say they make people dependent on the centre's support and that prevents relinking with mainstream community. Others say that timing is everything and sometimes people need this safety in order to regain confidence. People who access our service for the first time are aged from early twenties to 60s.

I work for a Non government organisation supporting people living with mental illness. I am part of a small working group that is putting together a plan for our organisation to work from a recovery perspective. We particularly want to change the assessment process when perople first come to seek assistance. At the moment our assessment questionnaire is deficits based so we are looking information and suggestions for strengths based assessment. Our collaboration plan will of course involve consumers of our organisation. Any suggestions and ideas from forum participants would be appreciated.

Hi Lonewolf

I see that your group is quite different from a Grow. Your goals for soccial inclusion is very admirable. I wish you all the best in your endeavours.

The public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) offer training iin all areas of advocacy including: Being an Effective Consumer Representative on Boards and Committees. I have found their training useful in the past. It has been a while since I have use PIAC and i'm unsure of the costs.

I hope this is more helpful.

Kind regards
Steven

Congratulations to all involved in establishing this boardroom. As part of the Leadership in Action course, a small group of us are seeking resources for our project. We are community-based mental health workers with an NGO and include managers and team leaders. Our aim is to develop an assessment tool that is strengths based and in line with the Recovery model. We are collecting research articles from which can refer to but felt this forum was one we wanted to be part of. It is part of our project plan to participate in this and be of assistance as well as requesting input.