We're happy to announce an upcoming training for those

interested in becoming facilitators for Hearing Voices Groups.

Monday, August 5th through Thursday, August 8th

10 am -  4 pm

@ Holyoke Community College,

Kittredge Center, 303 Homestead Ave, Holyoke, MA

The Hearing Voices approach offers a non-pathologizing, open way of understanding and supporting people through the experience of hearing voices. It assumes that hearing voices (as well as seeing visions and other sensory experiences) can be a normal part of human experience with a variety of meanings for people. Hearing Voices groups are widely available throughout the United Kingdom and many other countries and are just taking hold in the United States. The purpose of this training is to help create more groups across the country.

Facilitators for this training include:

Lisa Forestell, Marty Hadge, Sera Davidow

Rachel Waddingham (by Skype) & Gail Hornstein

Application required & due by Friday, June 14^th  now Friday, June 21!

The original deadline got extended so that everybody who wants to get an application in has a bit more time to do it!

CLICK HERE FOR AN APPLICATION

For more information e-mail us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or visit our website!

Withdrawing from Medication:

 

This three-hour workshop will cover a number of topics related to supporting people who are choosing to withdraw from psychiatric medication. It will include discussion of relative lack of information available on the process of withdrawal, common experiences for people who are stopping their medications, and steps for supporting someone through this process.

There has been a relative explosion of ‘peer’ roles in the last five years in Massachusetts.

In many organizations, peer roles came to be developed largely because contracts began to require them (though many of these same organizations were already contemplating how to make that move of their own volition, and some had already begun to do so).

While most people see this shift as positive, it comes with many inevitable ‘bumps,’ learning curves, and tensions.

One of the most present and ongoing tensions connected to the integration of peer roles has been figuring out how to make space for a role that operates in a substantively different way, while still needing to meet the basic requirements and needs of the organization within which the position is held. Issues of this sort that have arisen include those around:

• medication administration
• involvement in representative payeeships
• treatment planning 
• note taking.

We'll be focusing on the last part, the taking of notes.

In its purest form, the ‘peer’ role is intended to be based in mutuality, partnership and the concept of ‘in but not of’ the system. But what does each of these mean? In brief:

Mutuality: Mutuality does NOT necessarily mean exactly equal or identical roles, and still leaves room for some responsibilities for each person to be different. However, it does require that no one be seen as THE expert, and it assumes that the focus is on the relationship rather than one person. 

Partnership: This principle assumes that no one is taking on the ‘doing for’ or ‘fixing’ role, and that there is a sense of shared responsibility and participation that is practiced intentionally throughout the relationship. Power balance is critical.

'In But Not of': This is the trickiest but perhaps the most important of these concepts. The peer role has been developed around the concept that the job is to work in the system, but NOT be responsible to all the system’s systems. Instead, the main priority and focus is to make sure that the individual with whom they are working is supported to develop their voice and be heard. Above all else, the person in the peer role helps to create the conditions (by the language they use, the opportunities they point out, the resources they share, the questions they ask, etc.) to make that possible.

Plainly put, note taking interferes with all of these most basic values.

• It takes away from mutuality by requiring one person to write about another.
• It enhances power differentials that can damage the trust that is so critical to peer-to-peer support. 
• It moves away from partnership and shared responsibility by creating a ‘reporting back’ requirement. 
• Even attempts to ‘share’ writing notes WITH the person about whom the note is being written have most recently been foiled by new, computerized note keeping systems that are not accessible where meetings are actually taking place.
• Finally, it clearly interferes with the ‘in but not of’ principle. Notes are most typically attached to treatment plans, and while it is within the scope of a peer-to-peer relationship to support someone to develop their voice and vision around what they’d like their treatment plan to say, it is NOT within the scope of that relationship to have the person in a peer role be responsible for writing that plan, writing corresponding notes in that plan, to be written into that plan as responsible for some element or intervention and so on.

Asking People to Leave Their Residences During the Day:

A Human Rights Violation?

1. Because there is concern that people will retreat to their bedrooms and/or just sit around the house all day
2. Because, although the residence is someone’s home, it is also a program, and each person signs a contract agreeing to participate in their treatment while there
3. Because the provider does not have money to staff the residence all day long

A new peer-run support group is starting at the RLC's Holyoke Center, aimed at creating a safe, non-judgmental space to find support and talk with others about extreme states, gender and sexuality. People who identify with the LGBTQQA spectrum, and those whose gender and sexual identity is otherwise defined, are all welcome.  For those who live with extreme states or have ever been given a psychiatric label and are looking for support in not being “normal”, or wanting to be, you can find a place here!

Why the Sylvia Rivera Peer Support Group?: While the LGBTQQA… acronym includes many words that people may identify with, and also “flags” a safe space for folks whose gender and sexual identities differ from the “norm”, it can never be inclusive—without running on indefinitely. This group takes on Sylvia Rivera’s name to avoid this game of naming and to honor a transgender woman whose life was dedicated to the rights and dignity of people left out in the cold—so to speak—racially, economically and through gender identity.

 Thursdays, 4:30pm to 6:00pm @ the RLC’s Holyoke Center, 187 High Street, Suite 303

click 'read more' to learn more about Sylvia Rivera