Treating trauma is a community problem, not personal.,
A woman is beaten in the United States every 15 seconds. Society pays the cost in mental health budgets. courts , cops, corrections, substance abuse, and children’ services. The real social cost of trauma has been well known to people who work in those systems for years, but there is no consensus about what to do, or how to build political support, for treating trauma.
treating trauma is essential. People like Cheryl Sharp and Shery Mead are bringing the role of treating trauma in mental health to the forefront, nationwide. Shery
We need to keep creating and developing options beyond alternative treatments, an “underground railroad” of peer respites for crisis opportunities, instead of the same old warehousing, involving hopelessly long and deep interruptions that just lead people to decay and death.
What’s amazing is that we are doing much of this in some places on a shoestring. It is remarkable that people and organizations are stepping forward for a hand up, rather than a hand out. That is the neighborly, paying-it-forward thing to do, not wasting our human resources, which costs everybody.
CRPD, the UN disabilities rights treaty, needs 67 votes in the U.S. Senate
On July 26, 2012, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to recommend that the full Senate ratify the International Convention on Human Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD), with a reservation that the treaty requires no change in state of federal law.
Like all foreign treaties, this disabilities rights treaty requires a two-thirds majority (67 Senators) of the full Senate to become law.
Over 300 disability organizations support this treaty, also 21 veterans’ groups, including Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Disabled American Veterans
stephenboren61@yahoo.com Editor’s Note: This first appeared www.madinamerica.com as a comment on Ken Braiterman’s blog about peer support in disease model facilities. With a different hospital administration, focusing on trauma and distress, not medication, Ken does peer support with inpatients one hour a week.
Shery Mead questioned whether peer support in disease model facilities was possible
I am a “peer guide, employed to offer peer support in a disease model state hospital. I’ve been trained in Shery Mead’s model of Intentional Peer Supports (IPS) with its Four Pillars. I’ve been at the hospital over a year but still do not get
Randy Johnson (blue shirt) in a team building exercise to build good peer support in Kansas city
A story with an example of good peer support: Lots of people ask what really good peer support looks like. Here’s Ken Braiterman, our board chair’s story of how he build himself a great peer support team: http://kenbraiterman.com/how-i-built-the-ability-to-be-happy/
This post is a three way conversation that kind of started between Corinna West, and Adinah, our volunteer coordinator, and John, her good friend who is also a psychiatrist. We’re posting this conversation below to illustrate four things. 1) Good peer support has to be
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