In 1998, state funding came through to develop a 10-bed, three-week stay Stabilization Unit, The Primary Support Unit, servicing homeless men with major psychiatric issues within the second-largest shelter in the country, run by the Salvation Army. I was charged with getting this project off the ground and directing the unit, which would hold a recovery orientation focus. (click link, Framework of Orientation). We would service the inner city of Toronto, Canada, and surrounding municipalities. The Unit saw the bulk referrals from hospitals, shelters, and community mental health service agencies.

The stabilization unit was based on newly minted recovery research out of the US and elsewhere, which began in the 1980s and showed medications, though having a role in treatment, were just one-half of the treatment equation. This recovery research was unearthing the second half of the equation involved with making a recovery of a personal nature versus a chemical recovery with medications. What emerged from the data was a discovery that there is a distinct difference between a “treatment recovery,” medication-based, and a “personal recovery,” a strength-based focus, which was the orientation framework of the Primary Support Unit. Both halves of the equation, recovery and treatment, share the same aim to better the person and their life, but for different reasons. In my mind, they were the left and right sides of the same coin. The emerging research showed people can experience a “personal recovery” (see terms and definitions), whether they are on medications or not under the right conditions.

These right conditions researchers noted for making a “personal recovery” were formulated into a set of tenets or principles that can orient the interaction of mental health systems under what can be called the Framework of Recovery Orientation (click here). These researchers demonstrated when the tenets are applied; this facilitates a shift in the person’s internal mindset about their relationship with mental health illness and the approach to living with these illness conditions that is freeing. They became less bound by the mental illness and less identified with their condition (s). This translated into better recovery and treatment outcomes.

Such results, though, flew in the face of psychiatry’s bio-medical model. They viewed medications as the sole formulation required for the whole treatment equation. In their view, only a chemical recovery, with medications, mattered to get people living with major mental illnesses back on their feet. However, the recovery research shows that this psychiatric viewpoint is only one half of the equation, as many people are languishing under medication treatment. However, the data collected so far demonstrates that when these two halves of the coin (equation) are combined, the results for both the patient and the service systems were more robust than medications used alone as the first line of treatment.

Some decades later, I was posted at a major regional hospital psychiatric department by a large community mental health agency. I was involved in group and individual work with clients within in-patient, day hospital, and outpatient services in my capacity as a Peer Navigator. Over my term within the psychiatric department, I took on a project to formulate a novel program to bring the practice of recovery to groups and individuals. I wanted to develop a program that translated the system orientation to recovery into the meeting rooms. I saw the connection between my Narrative Practitioner training (terms and definitions) and my expertise in recovery orientation would be a potent combination. The project aimed to ground “system-oriented recovery” into an actionable program for groups and individuals by taking this framework one step further than it was initially applied. I was motivated to do so by what I was witnessing. Most of the clients I interacted with would tell me they were waiting for the right combination of medications to work before they could begin carrying on living. In other words, “Until I am on the right medications, I can’t pick my life up.” While medications are important, I knew the “pick my life up” did not need to wait for medications to work, well. This was clear from research in recovery-oriented care. The incubation project, spanning five years, involving a practice-based evidence approach with individual and group work yielded patient-approved results and the components for this novel and innovative program.

Since retiring, I decided to put these components together, which you see before you as The Recovery Protocol Breakthrough, a portable, learnable, step-by-step, structured program for one-to-one interactions led by a service provider (e.g., psychotherapist, psychiatrist, primary care physician, peers, etc.). My hope is to see consumers living with major mental health conditions, like anxiety and depression-related conditions, who are languishing because of poor medication effectiveness not have to wait to pick up their lives. This recovery proposition is both possible and achievable.

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.