Catalog

All videos are now available on DVD only

Save up to 20% when you buy in volume!

This three-part series - based on a workshop with renowned author Mary Ellen Copeland - presents simple, effective, and non-invasive self-help strategies for anyone dealing with emotional, behavioral, or psychiatric challenges. This workshop provides useful information about how to get well and stay well. It is invaluable for in-service trainings and for self-help and support groups.

All three sessions - previously sold individually on VHS - are on one DVD. For ease of use, the workshop may be viewed in its entirety without interruption; or each session, and even each topic, may be viewed individually.

Session #1 - 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. (52 minutes)

Session #2 - 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 session, 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. (32 minutes)

Session #3 - The Wellness Toolbox introduces the concept of "wellness tools"

- simple actions that anyone can do to feel better and to stay well. Participants discuss with Ms. Copeland how to create a personal "toolbox" for their own use in times of stress or increased symptoms. The workshop is organized into various topics including reaching out for support, peer counseling, focusing, relaxation and stress reduction, and journaling. (28 minutes)

"CREATING WELLNESS is the leading edge of mental health education. This extraordinary program shows how you can overcome hopelessness and helplessness to take charge of your own recovery, how you can find the support and resources you need, and how to chart a course back to wellness. This is a program full of compassionate help by someone who's been to the far side of depression and back - and knows what she's talking about."
- Matthew McKay, Ph.D.
Co-founder and Publisher, New Harbinger Publications
Author, The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook

This version is DVD format only.

Conversations about one woman's struggle with schizophrenia and its impact on her family.

All three sessions, previously sold separately on VHS are now available on one DVD for only $49.95.

Mental Illness in the Family (26 minutes)
Recovering from Mental Illness (27 minutes)
My Sister is Mentally Ill (22 minutes)

"The Bonnie Tapes deserve a niche on the shelf of every family support group, every psychosocial club, and every professional who works with individuals with serious mental illness. They have something to teach each of us." Kayla F. Bernheim, Ph.D., Psychologist and Author

The highly acclaimed Bonnie Tapes present an articulate young woman with schizophrenia in discussions with her family and with mental health professionals. Bonnie, now 27, had her first psychotic break when she was 16. She and her family talk together about the illness as it affected them then, and about living with it since.

The discussions examine important questions such as: What happens when mental illness enters the life of a family? How does the person struck by the illness feel? What are some of the steps on the road to recovery?

"With candor, remarkable acumen, convivial humor, all painfully garnered from agonizing personal experiences and therapeutic insight -- 27-year-old Bonnie and her family discuss the onset, course, and implications of the young woman's schizophrenia in three videos."

     - Irene Wood, American Library Association

 

A Conversation with Ed Knight, Sheila Le Gacy, and Nancy Kehoe

Speaking from the heart about mental illness and recovery

Three mental health professionals, representing three different viewpoints, speak about recovery from serious mental illness. In an engaging conversation, Dr. Ed Knight, Sheila Le Gacy, and Dr. Nancy Kehoe share their personal and professional experiences about recovery and its many challenges.

DVD format only

A portrait of two women struggling with mental illness
(25 minutes)

Elizabeth and Kathleen have been officially classified as having a mental illness. In this video, they focus on their strengths and resist being defined by others.

The Mental Illness Education Project is pleased to distribute this videotape co-produced by the Family Service Centre of Ottawa-Carleton and Canadian documentary filmmaker, Angele Gagnon, who directed it.

Words That Bite offers a glimpse behind the wall that separates many people with mental illness from society. With humor and candor, Elizabeth Dahle and Kathleen Gorman reveal the enormous toll that diagnostic labels can exact.

The film provides insights into a variety of issues: relationships, acceptance, grief and loss, health issues, medication and its side-effects, poverty, work, despair and hope. "On the street" interviews both confirm and contrast with the experiences described by Kathleen and Elizabeth. The result is a compelling and distinctive portrayal of their experiences.

Available on DVD

The Peer Educators Project in Action

(25 minutes)

In this 25-minute video, people with psychiatric disabilities gather to share their practical knowledge and experience, and help each other take steps toward recovery. They candidly discuss real-life stresses - finding housing, navigating the mental health system, returning to work.

Two peer-educators groups are shown: Recovery Workbook Group helps people with a psychiatric condition develop practical skills needed to rebuild their lives, and Double Trouble in Recovery Group helps people dealing with alcohol or drug addiction as well as a mental illness.

"I depended on the mental health system. So I had to learn to make it work for me, and I am trying my best to teach others what I learned."      - Moe Armstrong, Co-Founder,
     Peer Educators Project

Available on DVD

~ Being a Parent with Mental Illness ~
(27 minutes)

As seen at the 1999 White House Conference on Mental Health

Eight mothers and fathers who have mental illness discuss the challenges they face as parents. No one knows how many parents must cope with mental illness while raising children, but it is a far larger number than is generally realized.

This tape is an introduction to some of the problems these parents are dealing with as they strive to be effective, supportive and loving mothers and fathers.

"'I love you like crazy' is a wonderful and wonderfully useful and inspiring videotape. It provides insight, comfort, and reassurance, offering a fresh and welcome portrait of struggles and triumphs, too often hidden from us all."

- Jay Neugeboren, Author, Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Mental Illness</

Available on DVD

Ten parents and siblings share their experiences of having a family member with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, with lengths of illness ranging from three to 40 years.

Designed to provide insights and support to other families, the tape also has profound messages for professionals about the needs of families when mental illness strikes.

In two versions: a 22-minute version ideal for short classes and workshops, and a richer 43-minute version with more examples and details.

"Invaluable in empowering families to become part of the treatment and rehabilitative process."

An Integrated Model for the Treatment of People with Co Occurring Psychiatric and Substance Disorders (2 hours)

Lecture by Kenneth Minkoff, M.D.

Mental illness and substance disorders frequently occur together but have traditionally been treated separately - often in isolation and unsuccessfully. Dr. Kenneth Minkoff, a dynamic speaker and nationally known expert in dual diagnosis, outlines how care can be integrated despite differences in treatment philosophy.

Well-versed in both the mental health and the substance abuse systems, Dr. Minkoff illustrates how each system can learn from the other. What emerges is a set of key principles for an integrated model of care that promotes both hope and recovery.

This two-hour videotape is for mental health and substance abuse professionals and others concerned with this challenging field. A set of handouts is included with the tape; additional sets are available.

Available on DVD

Published by Peach Press

In this dynamic, practical, and popular guide, Mary Ellen Copeland gives people with mental illness self-help tools to more easily monitor their health, decrease the severity and frequency of symptoms, and improve quality of life.

Well known for her seminar and lecture presentations, Copeland holds an MA in Counseling Psychology. In this book she shows how to incorporate the practical strategies that she and others have developed and successfully used to keep their own symptoms manageable.

Wellness Recovery Action Plan $12.00