Powerful Choices: Peer Support and Individualized Medication Self-Determination

Abstract

I am a certified peer specialist. I have helped homeless people and people with mental illnesses reclaim their lives by sharing my story of recovery from both homelessness and mental illness. I use many tools and creative talents each day at work: poetry, PowerPoint presentations, personal conversations, recovery research, and extensive social networking. I believe that the mental health system can change to provide recovery for every single person with mental illness. I think that 2 of the important science-to-service gaps in real-world schizophrenia treatment are the ability to inspire people to make changes in their own lives and to help people decide to take responsibility for important choices that will affect their recovery. As a peer specialist, I tackle both issues. I think that we need both more peer support and more medication self-determination and individualization of treatment. My message is a story of hope that all people with mental illness can take control of their lives on the other side of a diagnosis. We can regain a productive and fulfilling membership in the community. By combining my life passions, my recovery story, my dreams, and my joys, I am able to create novel presentations and workshops. I perform these for day programs, support groups, consumer-run organizations, and staff trainings at community mental health centers. These are active and participatory learning experiences that incorporate performance or spoken word poetry, PowerPoint slides, and cutting edge research that challenge how the current mental health system is being funded and operated. I am a storyteller, and I tell a tale of change: taking the power back to help oneself, taking risks, and finding new dreams. I create short or long workshops where people can become inspired by both giving and receiving peer support in order to learn the importance that mutual relationships can have. I believe that peer support is the future of the mental health system, and we will be some of the most powerful forces in transforming the mental health system to a “recovery-oriented community of hope.”1 My recovery involved finding a way to maximize my strengths and move beyond my weaknesses, and active transportation, including walking, running, and bicycling, is an important element in my daily routine. Patricia Deegan, PhD, a psychologist who has also recovered from schizophrenia, has come up with a term called “personal medicine,” which is what we do for ourselves. Pill medicine is what we take, and personal medicine is what we do, both how we stay well and the reasons we find for wanting to stay well.2 I have incorporated my art, my work, and my life, in a way where many of the things I do will enhance my recovery. I ride a bicycle everywhere I go and advocate for the 8.3% of Missouri households that have no access to an automobile.3 I use exercise as a positive coping tool for stress, I am out and involved in the community, and I have made a great group of friends and supporters who enjoy my personality with or without mental illness. My plan, my power, and my way is to do what I can to be a positive, inspirational person who has immense potential to make the world a better place.