Preamble: The Recovery Protocol Breakthrough operates on two sites. The site you are currently on is called the Home Site, and the second site is known as the Program Site. The home site sets the stage for understanding the context for making a recovery and its relationship to medication failure. It is a primer that sets the context for recovery, as context is everything, providing the understanding that is half of the equation towards making recovery possible.  The program site presents instructions for the implementation of this protocol. For Access to the program, see the menu title Program Access.

The Recovery Protocol Breakthrough is a dynamic program designed for consumers with their service providers, offering a transformative way to “recovery” for those languishing in their lives living with anxiety and depressive conditions, with no end in sight. As a program, it addresses the impact of “medication failure” on the person’s quality of living, autonomy, and empowerment. When recovery is activated, research over the past 30 years has reported people tend to realize greater freedom at the helm of their lives, a stronger sense of self, and an improved quality of living, allowing them to own their lives again. This is a freeing experience where The Illness (anxiety & depression conditions) operates from a weakened position where its grip, strength, and influence diminish over time to the point where holding its dominant centralized position in a person’s life is lost. With this loss of footing, the individuals gain back their centralized position in living their lives while their mental health condition(s) is relegated to a minor, post-dominant position, ceasing the impact and hold they once held.

Recovery Defined
There are many definitions of recovery. However, to contextualize recovery from Citizens Psychiatry’s vantage, here is the following description,

Personal Recovery can be described as a self-directed, transformative, and collaborative journey of discovery and learning that fosters a person’s alignment with their values and capabilities. This alignment places the individual at the center of their life, living with greater value, meaning, and purpose. This journey changes the mental illness trajectory, where the Illness’s grip, strength, and influence lessens due to the person’s degree of autonomy and empowerment increasing. As a result, the journey builds a person’s sense of “agency” and “hopefulness” to succeed in making a recovery possible. (Under Terms and Definitions, the recovery term is covered more fully).

Why would “Recovery” matter to you?
One chief disadvantage of relying on medications alone can be seen in the analogy depicted in the (A) diagram. The stool shows the weight of a person’s life and the mental illness (s), as illustrated by the seat itself and its single support column representing medications taken to carry this weight.

These psychotropic drugs taken are now known by research that, in their design, they cannot withstand the full weight of one’s life, which includes the mental health condition (s) but are meant to ensure enough treatment support to give one more breathing room to rest and re-energize, as the symptoms dampen, thereby allowing for greater function, in theory. The idea is for these drugs through the symptom reduction to allow a person to regain living one’s life with the mental illness (s) playing a minor or non-existent role. While this may work with a few, for most people, the stress on the medication column becomes too great to hold the weight of the stool’s seat to the point where that support beam begins to strain, crack, and sway under this duress. This weakened column structure impacts the person by also weakening their strength to live a life of quality. Over time, a person can feel the weight of life becoming heavier along with the mental health condition (s) held, leaving them with the fear of buckling under this strain at any time. This is where a medication failure begins, and medication trials ensue.

The individual stress of not getting any relief from medications to function due to their failure impacting how the person feels about their sense of self and life in negative ways occurs over time. This is on top of the stress created by the mental health symptoms. As this nature of stress grows, it is well known that this duress can diminish medication performance. Here, an impeding cycle begins where the degrading of medication potency by personal stress further increases the individual’s stress levels and adds to the weight for the medications to support further. In turn, the medication column weakens even more and gives way to being off work on disability, emergency room visitations or hospital stay, which can become a repetitive cycle and costly to both families and livelihoods.

At this point, recommendations for psychotherapy can be offered to provide an additional support beam. Research has demonstrated that when psychotherapy is added, medications work better, and people can function better in their lives. This is partly due to the redistribution of weight by how the person carries the mental health illness (s) and their lives, as read in the “Fable” on the Introduction page. This weight is now shared by two columns instead of one. However, for some people, this combination is still not enough. This is where the Recovery Protocol Breakthrough program enters the picture and entertained, whether with psychotherapy or not. As in diagram (B), this adds a missing column of support rarely addressed directly in psychotherapy or allied professions and not by physician providers. This program addresses the diminished sense of “agency” and “hopefulness,” which lowers the empowerment and autonomy of a person to live well resulting from medication failure.

Applying a recovery program of this nature with treatment and or psychotherapy allows for another support column to share in the carrying & holding the weight discussed with greater ease while complementing these therapies’ effectiveness. Here, the weight endured in carrying the mental health condition (s) and an individual’s life gains greater support by being a necessary structural addition to the stool. Like psychotherapy, recovery orientation, according to research, has demonstrated that as a person’s function and quality of life increase, medications become more responsive, and the person’s sense of self is elevated in value. This elevation of self gives the drive necessary to make treatment (psychotherapy and or medications) work. This impact is also applied to recovery orientation.

How?
The first step is Priming, which involves setting the foundation,(psychoeducational) for initiating recovery. The home site you’re on is dedicated to Priming. Both individuals and mental health service providers are introduced further to what has led to,
a) experiencing medication failure
b) discover the impact this can have on the eroding of a person’s psyche
c) what the approach of the program is all about
d) what is recovery like, and
e) what is involved within the provider’s meeting room or office
f) what can be achieved with a making a recovery

The second step is to access the program site from the home site, which outlines how to implement the program. On this site, one is introduced to background support for recovering through a new and upcoming field of psychiatric medicine known as Functional Medicine in psychiatry. This is an offshoot of traditional medical training in psychiatry that solely focuses on medications as the first line of treatment. Various names for this offshoot include Integrative Psychiatry, Functional Psychiatry, and Orthomolecular Medicine in Psychiatry. The use of functional nutrients in foods (vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, hydration, etc.) and functional supplements are designed to naturally provide the brain and body with what is needed to support making recovery possible and treatment work well or on its own as a transformative recovery method. With this approach, movement and sleep are added as critical components for supporting recovery. For some people experiencing “medication resistance” (medication failure), this is what is required to kick-start recovery and be its recovery engine.

The program shares pathways to introduce the Functional Medicine approach to one’s psychiatric provider. This background support is highly recommended in the program but is an option due to the lack of access and unfamiliarity with traditional mainstream psychiatry. However, it can still be implemented through several pathways, as outlined in the program. While this is the case, just like a jet plane with two engines, where one is not active, the plane is designed to fly well to its destination. This analogy applies to this background support if it is not active at this juncture in time. The recovery program is designed to maximize the lift and flight to a person’s recovery destination with one engine down. However, the recovery journey is optimized even further with two in operation. If only the core program is active, this engine is powered by a specialized interview process, narrative strength based, and recovery exercises with a service provider, whether psychiatric or not, that is aimed at building back “agency” and “hopefulness” as the necessary ingredients for elevating empowerment and increasing personal autonomy. There is also an option, if either engine is under performing on its own to engage the other one. The aim is for the person to live a person-directed life of greater meaning and purpose than before.

The program provides step-by-step instructions and guidance in this recovery endeavor, along with resources. Implementing the core program and its background support synergistically can take treatment and or psychotherapy to new heights that medications alone rarely attain, or the program can be implemented on its own as the sole engine for recovery.

Here is a chart that outlines the choices and combinations that compliment this recovery protocol as a team or conducted on its own.                 

Introducing: Flash Drive Forms
Have you as a consumer ever felt when going to your service provider hoping to give the best information about what you are facing in your life to get the best service only to leave their office feeling frustrated. The frustration can stem from forgetting what to say due to the pressures of a short appointment time window, which has left only the time frame to discuss symptoms, medications, and problems and management. Or, have you experienced the frustration of a provider not asking you the right questions to elicit the information you want to give because they are the experts and you are not in your life? Many clients walk away feeling unheard and not listened to, a very disheartening feeling coming with a caveat, “They don’t get me.”

This program introduces to the consumer a unique way to record vital recovery information in a compressed form that typically takes multiple sessions to gather. The Flash Drive Forms take the worry from the client of getting the right information to the service provider as it is all on the flash drive. Therefore, collecting the same quality information no longer takes multiple sessions or months. The forms also remove the client’s fumbling when attempting to formulate the right words to say to the provider about what they are facing in their lives, especially when the appointment windows are short in duration. This saves on repeating the story of their lives over and over again in the hope the provider can capture what the person wants to impart to improve treatment or service outcomes. Furthermore, many clients have reported that they hope the required questions are asked to elicit what they want to share as the provider is the expert on knowing what is relevant or not, only to face disappointment. The Flash Drive Forms also present the neglected half of the treatment equation known as “recovery orientation” in mental health. Recovery embodies a person’s ability to be able-bodied within and express this able-bodied-ness in their life.

With the Flash Drive Forms, feelings of relief and satisfaction are gained knowing in just one session, the landscape for recovery, strengths to highlight, and the barriers faced are held in the hands of both you and the service provider to discuss and not discover, which can take many sessions. For the provider, it takes the guesswork out of determining the client’s priorities for making recovery possible and gaining a clearer picture of the landscape of a person’s recovery territory. The information gathered also informs treatment and complements it. Also, with these forms, a person’s recovery status can be evaluated and fine-tuned to offer the best results.

Terms of Use:  This program is for consumers with medication failure. No fees are required. Permission is granted to print materials from this site without prior consent from the site administrator. The consumer can port this protocol and introduce it to their non-clinical or clinical provider. The objective is to put into play this protocol to kick-start a recovery since medications are offering poor treatment returns, which is impacting a person’s quality of life and functioning from a recovery perspective.

Disclaimer:  The information provided on this site does not constitute medical advice or treatment. The information acts only as a guide to consider the elements for making recovery possible and how to institute such a program of practice within the Meeting Room space of one’s service provider.