Advocacy
Dan Fisher is a very well-educated individual. An M.D., a Ph.D., and a board-certified psychiatrist, he served as a member of the White House Commission on Mental Health and is presently the executive director of the National Empowerment Center. Dan, however, maintains that his greatest accomplishment is his recovery from schizophrenia. 

It is, in part, due to his own experiences that Dan chooses to spend his life as an advocate for persons with mental health challenges. He actively seeks to dispel the myth that people do not recover from mental illness. At the conference, Dan challenged peer specialists to take the time to educate themselves about state and federal agencies that play key roles in the disbursement of monies that fund mental health systems. Peer specialists should utilize Health Care Reform Legislation to advocate for the needs of the psychiatrically disabled. 

Dan feels that the new director of Medicaid, Cindy Mann, is “an ally” to the mental health recovery movement. He encourages peer specialists to write to her office and ask her to make sure that the 1991 Olmstead Decision made by the Supreme Court is complied with, namely, “that unjustified institutional isolation of people with disabilities is a form of unlawful discrimination.”

 

 eCPR
After his major presentation, Dan gave a workshop on Emotional CPR. .” eCPR is a public health education program, which prepares all members of the public to assist a person who is experiencing an emotional crisis. Using the well-known CPR procedure for persons suffering heart failure as an analogue, “emotional CPR is a form of heart-to- heart connection for emotional resuscitation. Dan is bringing this program to police departments throughout the country and would like to see the program made mandatory for all agencies and service providers who work with the psychiatrically disabled. Training Peer Specialists in eCPR allows for a direct connection in its implementation in service-providing agencies.

 

Workplace Conflict Resolution
Research shows that there are five main conflict styles:  the Confronter (aggressive, power-oriented); the Accommodator (unassertive, cooperative); the Avoider (postpones, non-dealer); the Compromiser (let’s make a deal); and the Collaborator (let’s work this out to everyone’s benefit). Most conflicts in the workplace emerge from the following:  lack of information, false assumptions, insufficient training, poor or no supervision, cramped workspaces, old or defective equipment, gossip, abandoning protocols, and breakdown of communications. 

 

Mental Health Educator and CPS, Eric DiCenso, administered an instrument that enabled participants to determine their preferred style of addressing conflict. The most effective conflict manager is the Collaborator, as she/he insists that both sides of the conflict are heard and understood by all involved parties, and that everyone arrives at a consensus with regard to the resolution of the problem. Good conflict managers look at differences in opinions as an area of personal growth and an opportunity for creativity.

    

The fourth annual Peer Specialist conference served as a refresher course for Bob Rousseau, Fellowship Health Resources’ New Bedford Region’s (NBN) Peer Specialist. Although well-trained and very committed to improving the lives of others living with mental health issues, Bob found the tools provided at the conference invaluable, and is now implementing the new and revised ideas throughout his work in the NBN. He looks forward to attending the fifth national conference, which will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

 

Presently, SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration) is funding studies and programs that will enable mental health systems and mental health workers to provide trauma informed services. Long-time trauma care advocates, Cathy Cave and Beth Filson, shared how trauma victims, especially those of color, are often moved to the margins of mental health systems and approached differently than persons with lived mental illness experience without a history of trauma. Cathy and Beth believe that, for a very high percentage of persons with serious and persistent mental health issues, trauma is at the root of their ongoing relapses and substance use. 

Through their training in building mutually disclosing relationships, active listening skills, and the expression of unconditional, non-judgmental, positive regard for others, peer specialists bring hope and help to trauma victims. The help that peer specialists bring to trauma victims is different (though in no way inferior or less effective) than the help that trauma victims receive from therapists, clinicians and psychiatrists. Peer specialists have the benefit of building long-term relationships with psychiatrically disabled trauma victims, which allow them to frame or pattern an understanding of a trauma history that is often disclosed incrementally over a long period of time. Riding out the storm with trauma victims as they feel free enough to express their anger, rage, shame, guilt, and fear regarding issues of incest, rape, physical and emotional abuse, adolescent hazing and bullying, and other trauma events is a gift-of-self that peer specialists lovingly offer to the traumatized.

Pillars of Peer Support
Emily Grant, a research specialist at the University of Kansas (Wichita), presented evidence from the 22 States where Medicaid funds Certified Peer Specialist Training Programs,[i]  further demonstrating how peer support programs are transforming mental health systems. For peer specialists to continue their supportive roles, Emily outlined the importance of training, clear job descriptions, professional advancement opportunities, livable wage salaries, competent supervision and job assessment, and cultural diversity in the workforce. In addition, participation in statewide consumer movements that transcend local employment, peer specialist support groups, and ongoing education in recovery theory and practices are vital to peer-to-peer support.

 

Sanctuary
Lawyer and Peer Specialist Coordinator, Maria Hanson, of the Mendota Medical Center, spoke of the importance of creating a place of sanctuary within the peer specialist that is serene (conflict free), blissful (free of fear), loving (self-affirming) and accessible (a place of refuge). Once created, an intrapersonal sanctuary can provide the stability needed to begin to build sanctuary in communal settings and environments. Sanctuary builders will need to practice forgiveness, compassion, kindness, honesty, humility, and gratitude. These virtues combat negativity, fear, deceit, arrogance, grandiosity, and selfish entitlement. Sanctuary builders seek to create recovery environments that are care-full, life giving, and productive.

 

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