| Mental Health Workers |
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If you clicked on this link, you are probably one of those special people, who are involved with the care of people with mental health challenges.
Every now and then, there is an eruption of public concern about mental illness, usually sparked by overcrowding in inpatient facilities, horrific crime, or an occasional human interest story on television about ostracized people in the community, rattling with medications, but lost, lonely, and frightened.
There are also television advertizments about some mental health survivors, who are loved, assimilated into their families, with jobs, and community support.
Years ago when I worked as a field officer for the New Zealand Epilepsy Association, I became aware of how the community was much more nurturing of a broken leg, than the possibility of a broken mind.
I set up a support group for people with head injuries, called Action Care in the Bay of Plenty. Realizing the continual pressures that the families endured, with loved ones challenged by organic brain damage, chemical unbalance in the brain, or people with other neurological / psychological challenges.
My career path then led me to research and develop programs for youth at risk and their families. As I worked with some of our nations youngest and worst offenders, and their families, I remembered a quote by Truby King, the founder of both Seacliff asylum, and Plunket, "Education in parenting offers the main hope for the reduction in insanity" (New Zealand Statutes, 1947 pp.474-476)
I came to realize the links between family problems, young offenders, and mental health survivors, and have developed programs for each, over the past decade.
Purchasing the administration block of the former Cherry Farm Hospital, in 2003, has given me the opportunity to interview staff, and former clients, still living in the area.
The story that I have heard is always the same. In the early days, people enjoyed their time at Cherry Farm. Organic gardens were kept, chores done, by staff and patients, healthy meals, exercise and activities helped up to 750 people at a time, in sprawling villas.
When the Dept. of Health stepped in, favouring a new model of treatment (convulsive therapy, electro stimulation, and psychotrophic drugs) in the 1960s, life on the farm radically changed.
Unfortunately this is the period that has been often referred to, when thinking about residential care, instead of time of holistic healing in former years.
Then it was thought to be more cost effective, to medicate people, and send them back to the communities. Unfortunately the communities were not prepared for their new responsibilities.
The Marbles program was developed to help cultivate community care, when medical intervention alone has not solved the problems.
Marbles was named by a mental health survivor, who cheerfully said, "We all drop our marbles now and then, how wonderful to have a supportive network to help pick them up again. Medication helps, but it does not heal. Happiness is restored through the healing of memories".
The Marbles program can fit nicely into residential care, community care, and family care of mental health survivors.
Three-day training for facilitators options are available from November 2006. Check our calendar page and book on line.
Hope to meet you there!
People do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care. Keep up the good work. |
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