Young Families INSIGHTS
Winter 2007
Linda Swann, NAMI NC Young Families Program, Editor

Mental health recovery is a journey of healing and transformation enabling a person with a mental health problem to live a meaningful life in a community of his or her choice while striving to achieve his or her full potential.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently released a list of the principles essential to mental health recovery.  SAMHSA Administrator Charles Curie said, “Recovery must be the common, recognized outcome of the services we support.”  Here are the “10 Fundamental Components of Recovery.”

Self-Direction: By definition, the recovery process must be self-directed by the individual, who defines his or her own life goals and designs a unique path towards those goals.

Individualized and Person-Centered: There are multiple pathways to recovery based on an individual’s unique strengths and resiliencies as well as his or her needs, preferences, experiences (including past trauma), and cultural background in all of its diverse representations.

Empowerment: Consumers have the authority to choose from a range of options and to participate in all decisions—including the allocation of resources—that will affect their lives, and are educated and supported in so doing.

Holistic: Recovery encompasses an individual’s whole life, including mind, body, spirit, and community. Recovery embraces all aspects of life, including housing, employment, education, mental health and healthcare treatment and services.

Non-Linear: Recovery is not a step-by-step process but one based on continual growth, occasional setbacks, and learning from experience.

Strengths-Based: Recovery focuses on valuing and building on the multiple capacities, resiliencies, talents, coping abilities, and inherent worth of individuals.

Peer Support: Mutual support—including the sharing of experiential knowledge and skills and social learning—plays an invaluable role in recovery.

Respect: Self-acceptance and regaining belief in one’s self are particularly vital. Respect ensures the inclusion and full participation of consumers in all aspects of their lives.

Responsibility: Consumers have a personal responsibility for their own self-care and journeys of recovery. Taking steps towards their goals may require great courage.

Hope: Recovery provides the essential and motivating message of a better future— that people can and do overcome the barriers and obstacles that confront them. Hope is internalized; but can be fostered by peers, families, friends, providers, and others. Hope is the catalyst of the recovery process.

Source:  www.samhsa.gov
National Mental Health Information Center
1-800-789-2647, 1-866-889-2647 (TDD)

Five Rules for Change - Schwahn and Spady (1998)

• People don’t change unless they share a compelling reason to change.

• People don’t change unless they have ownership in the change.

• People don’t change unless their leaders model that they are serious about the change.

• People are unlikely to change unless they have a concrete picture of what the change will look like for them personally.

• People can’t make a lasting change unless they receive organizational support for the change.

America’s Health Rankings 2006:  North Carolina Unchanged at Number 36

One’s state of health is partly based on our genetic predispositions to disease.  That is a given. It is also the result of personal behaviors, the environment in which we live, the clinical care we receive, and the policies and practices of our health care system. Using these four areas, the United Health Foundation comes up with a report that tracks our nation’s overall health.

This year, North Carolina is once again ranked 36, unchanged from 2005.  Strengths include:

•  Ready access to prenatal care – 80.8 percent

• High immunization coverage – 85.2 percent

• Few poor mental and physical health days per month – 3.1 days and 3.4 days respectively in the previous 30 days

Areas needing improvement are:

• A low high school graduation rate because nearly 30 percent of incoming ninth graders do not graduate within four years 

• A high infant mortality rate, 8.6 infant deaths per 1000

• A high prevalence of smoking at 22.6 percent of the population

• The rate of the uninsured population which has increased from 12.6 percent in 1990 to 16 percent in 2006

For more information, go to www.unitedhealthfoundation.org

What Qualities Do Healthy Schools Have in Common? 

Healthy schools are one family

•   Regular and special education teachers are linked.

•   All students have the opportunity to have positive experiences.

•   All students feel a sense of “includedness.” 

  Student development is everyone’s responsibility

  A school-wide commitment to healthy development is key. 

  Healthy schools are “caring schools that value and respect all students.”

•   Staff need support in order to address the needs of all students

•   Building staff capacity is important. 

  Academic standards are high. Students feel supported in reaching their academic goals.

  Healthy schools also have high behavioral standards and give students the  positive support they need to achieve them.

•   Expectations are clear.

•   Simple interventions are used.

•   Teachers are well trained.

•   Administrative support is readily available.

•   Updated, appropriate technology is used.

  Three approaches to the management of behaviors are followed:

•   School-wide prevention

•   Early intervention

•   Targeted individual interventions

  Healthy schools are connected to their communities.

•   Families

•   Mental health and social service supports

•   Youth workers and juvenile justice

•   Community-based groups and business organizations

  Strategic plans are in place

•   Students’ needs are assessed.

•   Faculty input is used and their needs are assessed.

•   Research-based strategies are in place.

•   Services are well-coordinated.

Source: “Mental Health Supports and Academic Achievement,” The Georgetown Institutes System of Care Conference, Orlando, July 2006.  Speaker, David Osher, TA Partnership for Child and Family Mental Health/CMHS/SAMHSA.