The Recovery Protocol- Part 1

Introduction
Brief Recovery Work (BRW), the foundations of The Recovery Protocol Breakthrough, was formed to represent the unheard survivor voices of adults over my 40-year career in community mental health, who are tired of limping along in life due to poor medication response. This comes after countless drug trials from a psychiatric provider. For those living with long-standing anxiety disorders and chronic depression, ineffective medication response can halt a person’s capacity to believe it is possible to make a personal recovery. Therefore, this sadly leaves many people to suspend their lives and dreams.

However, by applying this protocol, people can empower themselves to revoke the suspension of their lives to pursue recovery, which enriches one’s life compared to where it is currently. Like the chapter on The Fable, read on this site, with discovering how to re-hold the weight and stress of the mental health impasse, the person can commence experiencing the road to a personal recovery. When recovery is in motion, more and more of their life become person-led verses the current illness-led living experienced.

The aim of this recovery Brief Recovery Work (BRW) protocol is not just to build the personal capacity of an individual to weaken the chains of the mental illness holding back their life, but also to transition to a new way of living, a Person-Oriented Life, allowing the Illness side of living to fade. Hence, The Illness, whether depression or anxiety disorders, is no longer experienced as the center of one’s life. This protocol accomplishes this by reestablishing the person at the center of their life, which leads to,

a) diminishing the influence of mental illness           
b) weakening the strength of the mental illness
c) loosening the grip of mental illness

while,

a) building Purpose
b) building Empowerment
c) building Hopefulness

For consumers hurting because of inadequate medication returns they have long voiced the essence of this sentiment,

“What happens next to me when medications fail, other than more drug trials?” 

In listening to this consumer constituency, a stream of sentiments has been expressed over decades about living under the reign of poor medication response. Here is a summary of these sentiments:

a) I am at my wits’ end. I feel more hopeless than ever before.
b) I would rather suffer the symptoms than take these drugs that numb and make my body feel weird
c) I feel like I am limping along in life with no way out.
d) The drugs are toxic to my being, but what other choice do I have?
e) I feel so undervalued with my psychiatric providers, our time together seems to only focus on the diagnosis, symptoms, medication, and illness management, as if I am the diagnosis that needs treatment. There is more to me and my life than this. It seems my life and what I am of value to me does not count in my treatment.

Such sentiments voiced over time tend to erode an individual’s recovery psychology (recovery mindset) of “Agency” with “Hopefulness”, the core belief set driving a “personal recovery”. Here, the term “recovery psychology” has been defined as,

… representing a belief set forming an attitude that determines the degree to which persons can conceive of having the capacity to make recovery possible by utilizing their personal resources exercised for this purpose.

With poor medication returns, the longer a person cycles in this form of treatment suspension, the greater the erosion of one’s recovery mindset. This impact can piggyback on the internalized stigma of accepting a psychiatric label, further weakening their recovery psychology.

Consider this statement from “The Psychiatrist” regarding empowerment in the article: Does the Scientific Evidence Support the Recovery Model? Volume 34, Issue 1, January 2010, pp. 3 – 5,

…People who accept that they have a mental illness may feel driven to conform to an image of incapacity and worthlessness, becoming more socially withdrawn and adopting a disabled role. As a result, their symptoms may persist, and they may become dependent on treatment providers and others…This view is supported by an early study of people with serious mental illness, which found that those who accept that they have a mental illness *(not the label) and have a sense of mastery over their lives *(an internal locus of control) have the best outcomes. However, those who accept the label of mental illness, i.e., *identify with it, tend to have lower self-esteem and an external locus of control, and those who find the mental illness label to be most stigmatizing have the weakest sense of mastery. Thus, internalized stigma undermines the possibility that insight *(accepting the label) will lead to good outcomes. (* This mark denotes inserted text for clarification purposes.)

What “The Recovery Protocol Breakthrough” injects for the first time is a regenerative practice that counters the erosion of an individual’s recovery psychology (recovery mindset) tied to medication failure, especially for those experiencing the label of mental illness as stigmatizing. However, by leveraging the resource capacity of a person, empowerment is cultivated and exercised by,

1) focusing on what is going right in a person’s life
2) bring personal inner and external strengths to the theatre of one’s life
3) addressing the hurdles to recovery to diminish their stress and weight while acknowledging the strength of the person to have carried the illness up until now
4) loosening the attachment to the label of the mental illness and to the illness itself.

When the program is applied, consumers feel visible in the service provider’s meeting room. They can start acknowledging that they, too, are the holders of power to change their illness-led status in their lives to a person-led position and not just by medication.

-The quality of one’s recovery mindset or psychology can either hinder or enhance recovery outcomes.

Unlike the “Pill” used in making a psychiatric recovery, a “personal recovery” requires leveraging personal resources, such as skills, abilities, hopes, purposes, talents, interests, passions, roles, and values connected to elevating “Agency” and “Hopefulness” for the strengthening and building back a strong recovery mindset. This focus produces a regenerative impact on their well-being that enhances an individual’s mental health status and quality of life.

–Pill taking alone cannot cultivate a recovery it requires a purpose that holds great meaning and value.

To date, the chemical route (medications), as the first line of treatment, is leaving people with protracted (without relief) depression and anxiety disorders in a state of “treatment suspension” until a new “Pill” or combination thereof comes on board that is touted as being more effective. Without building a stronger recovery psychology to counter-balance the effects of poor medication returns, the opportunity to shift from living an illness-centred position towards a person-led position, for many, becomes an elusive dream. However, by applying the program, a window in a person’s life can open where recovery can begin to take flight.

Medication Resistance: A Recovery Perspective
For consumers, poor medication response is psychiatrically called “medication resistance.” Unfortunately, people languishing with “medication resistance” tend to find their recovery psychology degrading over time, the longer the illness condition exists. For many consumers, the adverse impact of “medication resistance” tends to produce a sense of powerlessness, worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness to effect change in their lives, the opposite of empowering a strong sense of “Agency” and “Hopefulness”.

In the end, many consumers find fault with themselves when experiencing “medication failure” by engaging in self-blame. Even people with a religious core can feel punished by God for feeling unfit and unworthy of a life worth living. The guilt experienced can, in and of itself, suffocate a recovery. What service providers fail to understand is that such feelings can lead individuals in treatment to conceive that they are too complex and broken to treat and recover. Also, feelings of dejection and disappointment connected to the lack of treatment progress with “Pill” swallowing can leave individuals believing that the system is failing them or does not possess the ability to treat them. Such unhealth attitudes is a “hopefulness, “agency” and “empowerment” destroyer.

Continue to The Recovery Protocol Part 2 – Click Here