Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery Story Circles™

Conference Strand

Practice, Strategies, Techniques, and Interventions

Abstract

This Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery Story Circles workshop will engage participants in an experiential collective learning community (each one teaches one) primarily to work on healing, wellness and recovery goals, group leadership skills and effectively building sustained healthy relationships across cultural differences.

Description

This Workshop is a group process experiential applied Story Circle, it is not a Panel nor individual presentations. It will be facilitated by the group leaders.

Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery Story Circles (Story Circles) is a community evidence-based intervention that provides person-centered care that promotes whole-person wellbeing, recovery, Peer-leadership and advocacy among persons with lived experiences related to mental health challenges related to emotional distress, trauma, mental health and substance abuse and the achievement of health and wellness goals that generates recovery and improvements in the quality of life. Story Circles open up spaces within communities and organizations for individuals and families to obtain Peer-centered supportive care that validates their voices and choices and promotes shared power relationships between providers and recipients of services through co-facilitated Story Circles to promote mutual respect for the diverse lived experiences shared between and among culturally different people and communities.

Workshop Learning Objectives. Participants who attend the workshop will:

  • Gain an awareness of personal trauma and learn how to “work through” and heal from the impact of these experiences.
  • Explore Multicultural Competency best practices of knowledge, awareness and skills that support mental health wellness and recovery.
  • Learn the benefits of achieving healthy lifestyle changes and the how these behaviors support well-being and sustained mental health wellness and recovery.
  • Engage in Peer support community building relationships to combat alienation brought on by the stigma of mental illness.
  • Focus on personal recovery strengths and wellness rather than their illnesses.

Evidence

Applied Community-Based Participatory Research

Wellness and Recovery Story Circles (SC) is an applied mental wellness and recovery research initiative and has been collecting qualitative and quantitative outcome data from 2018 to present (ongoing). SC have been implemented within various community-based organizations and communities: mental health recovery, senior communities, trauma services, drop-in centers, faith-based, and Peer-operated interventions. Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery Story Circles proposed in this Workshop summary has been implemented for the past five years within culturally diverse organizations and populations, such as Peer artists, senior citizens, mental health drop-in center Peers, faith-based and members from the disability community. Data was collected to measure the outcomes generated from these multiple sectors. The applied research methods included Community-Based Participatory Research, Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire – Short Form, Trauma Symptom Checklist – 40, and pre and post assessments. In summary the outcomes disclosed that participants were able to reflect on their personal recovery, establish personal and collective wellness and recovery goals, support and promote healing through sharing, gather together to share experiences, listen to stories on unlearning stigma and prejudice, find common ground around similar experiences, and have a safe space to bring and share each individual's unique gifts. The ultimate results were that participants experienced reductions in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and acute traumatic stress, managed trauma symptom setbacks by making choices that supported physical and emotional wellbeing, re-established a mind-body connection, learned self-regulation skills, developed relationships and social networks for Peer support, decreased dissociation and ruminative thought processes, increased resilience-building skills, and improved quality of life factors.

Applied Research Resources

Wilcox, D. (2022). Wellness and Recovery Story Circles (YouTube): Professional development for New York Association for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association.

https://youtu.be/zdaon9firno?si=bx0uwVNHKobboAEf

Poetry For Personal Power Story Circle Evaluation Form https://forms.office.com/r/NigpcVby8Y

Miyamoto, Y., & Sono, T. (2012). Lessons from Peer Support Among Individuals with Mental Health Difficulties: A Review of the Literature. Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Health : CP & EMH, 8, 22–29. doi:10.2174/1745017901208010022

Lambert, J. (2013). Digital storytelling: Capturing lives, creating community. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis. My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts By Resmaa Menakem https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34146782-my-grandmother-s-hands

Listening to Stories (2020): The Power of Story Circles Story Circles build compassion and connection during challenging times.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-stories-our-lives/202008/listening-stories-the-power-story-circles

Retrieved from http://www.nasmhpd.org/docs/TAC Assessment PDF Report/Assessment 1 - Enhancing the Peer Provider Workforce_9-15-14.pdf

Deegan, P. E. (1988). Recovery, The lived experience of rehabilitation. Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal, 11(4), 11-19.

Durke, M. (2020). Community-Based Participatory Research.

https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.225

Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Questionnaire Short Form (Q-LES-Q-SF) (2016). https://datashare.nida.nih.gov/instrument/quality-of-life-enjoyment-and-satisfaction-questionnaire-short-form

Norris, Fran H. & Hamblen, Jessica L. (2004). Standardized self-report measures of civilian trauma and PTSD. In J.P. Wilson, T.M. Keane & T. Martin (Eds.), Assessing psychological trauma and PTSD (pp. 63-102). New York: Guilford Press. PTSDpubs ID 18638 http://s1097954.instanturl.net/trauma-symptom-checklist-40-tsi-40

Deardorff, D.K. (2023). Story Circles as an Intercultural Tool for Fostering Relationships. In: Baumann Montecinos, J., Grünfelder, T., Wieland, J. (eds) A Relational View on Cultural Complexity. Relational Economics and Organization Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27454-1_12

National Alliance of Rights and Recovery (https://rightsandrecovery.org/)

Format

Individual Presentations

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Deborah Wilcox educational practices include Counselor Educator/ Community Clinical Counselor/ Organization Development Consultation (30 years of experience) and an Associate Professor in Psychology at Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio (HBCU- First in the United States. She is the Founder of Confluency Consultants and Associates, a consultancy that specializes in Multicultural Competency Deliberative Organizational Development, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice planning and applied research, provider of Whole-Person Health and Wellness Coaching, and Workforce and Professional Development Education. The mission of her practice is to incorporate multicultural standards of best practice and to generate sustained wellness and well-being within organizations and communities. She currently serves as

Co-Chair of the Health Care Advisory Cabinet for Colorado State Senator James Coleman.

She has taught in higher education and has work experience with city government, foundations, and non-profit organizations. She has provided more than 100 educational workshops with community-based and professional organizations and has received several awards from national counseling research and psychiatric rehabilitation organizations for her research and service in Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery. Current research includes Peer-Centered Systems Development and Services; Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery Story Circles, Applied Community-Based Participatory Research Practices and Rites of Passage Process for African American Youth and Families.

Facilitator 2

Dr. ANITA P. JACKSON is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. She taught in the Zanesville and Cleveland, Ohio public-school system for 17 years and served as a school counselor in Worthington, Ohio for 2 years. She is an alumnus of Ohio University. She received her Ph.D. in Counselor Education from The Ohio State University in 1989. She is an Associate Professor Emeritus in Counseling and Human Development of the College and Graduate School of Education, Health, and Human Services at Kent State University where she served for 16 years in teaching and research. She has also served as a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and Supervisor for 34 years. Her research interests include HIV/AIDS prevention, stress, multicultural counseling, women’s issues, and African American history and development. Her research publications have also focused on these topics. While at Kent State, she and a colleague were co-researchers on three multi-million dollar grants from the National Institute of Mental Health on HIV/AIDS prevention among inner city women in Akron, Ohio over the course of 16 years and assisted another colleague with another grant on HIV/AIDS prevention among women of four Native American tribal groups in South Dakota adapting strategies relevant to their culture.

Location

Room 128

Start Date

3-8-2024 10:05 AM

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Mar 8th, 10:05 AM

Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery Story Circles™

Room 128

This Peer-Centered Mental Health Wellness and Recovery Story Circles workshop will engage participants in an experiential collective learning community (each one teaches one) primarily to work on healing, wellness and recovery goals, group leadership skills and effectively building sustained healthy relationships across cultural differences.