The Creating Wellness Series

Key Concepts for Mental Health offers an introduction to the underlying principles of Mary Ellen Copeland's recovery model. Lively and insightful discussions include hope, personal responsibility, education, self-advocacy, support, health care, and medication.

The Wellness Toolbox introduces the concept of "wellness tools" - simple actions that anyone can do to feel better and stay well. Participants discuss with Ms. Copeland how to create a personal "toolbox" for their own use in times of stress or increased symptoms. This video is organized into various topics including reaching out for support, peer counseling, focusing, relaxation and stress reduction, and journaling.

Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) provides a simple system for monitoring and managing emotional and psychiatric symptoms, as well as avoiding unhealthy habits or behavior patterns. In this video, Ms. Copeland discusses with her group the steps to developing a "WRAP". In order to arrest symptoms and hasten remission and recovery, participants both learn and share personal strategies for dealing with each level of relapse.

Mary Ellen Copeland, MS, MA, is the author of an array of self-help books, including Winning Against Relapse and The Depression Workbook. She is an internationally known mental health educator and advocate who has developed the recovery model shown in these videos. Participants include people who experience symptoms, family members and health care professionals.

Viewers and trainers will find Ms. Copeland's booklet, WRAP: Wellness Recovery Action Plan, a helpful companion to these videotapes.

"I'm looking to this video to be very, very important in terms of people learning how they can really help themselves with whatever psychiatric symptoms, or whatever issues … are getting in the way of their life being as full and as rich as they want it to be."

- Mary Ellen Copeland, CREATING WELLNESS Key Concepts for Mental Health

As a leading figure in the consumer mental health self-advocacy movement, Mary Ellen Copeland presents her own compelling personal experience, together with educational tools and skills developed with hundreds of psychiatric survivors. Although the focus of this videotape is recovery from psychiatric symptoms, the tools presented are useful to anyone coping with health problems or recovery.

The message of the CREATING WELLNESS series is one of hope and concrete solutions. Too often, people who experience psychiatric symptoms are given messages that undermine hope, self-advocacy, and overall recovery. These videotapes counter negative messages and stigma by presenting the real, on-going recovery of psychiatric survivors and their concrete, simple, and effective coping strategies. As Mary Ellen states: "People who experience psychiatric symptoms get well, stay well for long periods, and end up doing what they want to in their lives".

The vehicle of videotape places this workshop experience in the control of the individual. Although these tapes in no way constitute a replacement for mental health services, they can provide an introduction to self-care and an adjunct to existing supports. We hope to provide more and more individuals with the ability to respond wisely and effectively to their symptoms.

The workshop format, and clear consumer voice creates an ideal educational tool for staff training's, as well as a powerful vehicle for individual self-reflection or group work. There are seldom easy answers to the issues these tapes raise. However, though the honest depiction of individual experiences and ideas, we hope to raise everyone's sensitivity to these complex and important issues, and to combat the stigma of mental illness.

Quotes

"These articulate individuals demonstrate, through their comments, questions, attitudes, and humor, the very real possibility of recovery. This is an excellent teaching tool for individuals in rehabilitation programs, day treatment, clubhouses, residential programs - even inpatient populations - and a wonderful opportunity for families to hear those who are in recovery talk about how they actively participate in their own recovery process."

Sheila LeGacy, Supportive Family Training Director,
Transitional Living Services
Syracuse, NY

Mary Ellen's great & the best we've got in the country."

Moe Armstrong, MBA, MA
Director of Family and Consumer Affairs
Vinfen Corporation
Boston, Massachusetts

"These videotapes instill confidence in people's future, help people create a commitment to living life to its fullest and assure a focus on wellness and health, rather than illness and disease. This is an invaluable course that has lasting positive effects in people's lives as it puts the power of decision-making where it should be - in the hands of people who live with psychiatric disturbances."

Dori Hutchinson, Sc.D., LRC
Director of Services
Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University

This version is VHS format only.