About Mental Health Recovery & WRAP®

I am so glad you put this recovery program out. WRAP has done me the world of wonders. Through this program, I'm learning more about myself. I'm also learning to better organize my life to where it's more manageable. I am now on the road to a full recovery thanks to your program. I'm able to stand up for my rights in a more positive and effective manner.

--WRAP Participant

Mental Health Recovery and WRAP was started in 1989 as Mary Ellen Copeland began her studies of how people help themselves, get well, and stay well and her work received an important boost from the 1992 publication of the best-selling Depression Workbook. The Workbook, now a keystone in mental health circles, was the result of interviews with hundreds of people and years of research. Mary Ellen has continued these studies and now works with a highly competent and skilled staff and experts from around the country. Her books, CDs, DVDs, and online courses have been widely used and distributed all over the world.

Mission

The mission of Mary Ellen Copeland's Mental Health Recovery and WRAP is to promote personal, organizational, and community wellness and empowerment.

Her focus is on shifting the system of mental health care toward prevention and recovery through education, training, and research. The WRAP plan uses the accomplishments developed and implemented by the people being served and the people who care for them. This is reinforced by building networks that reflect mutual support and community organizational empowerment - concepts that are changing the face of mental health recovery.

I now feel like a whole person for the first time in my life.

-WRAP User

Overview

People who experience mental health challenges no longer feel that they are sentenced to a life of chronic disability that interferes with their ability to work toward and reach their goals. Instead, by using self-help skills and strategies that complement other treatment scenarios, they are achieving levels of wellness, stability, and recovery they always hoped were possible. This recovery information is being networked across the country by the Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery and by an ever-growing number of recovery educators through self-help publications, seminars, workshops, presentations, support groups, and the internet.

Goals

The goals of Mental Health Recovery and Wrap are to teach participants recovery and self-management skills and strategies:

• promote higher levels of wellness, stability and quality of life
• decrease the need for costly, invasive therapies
• decrease the incidence of serious mental health challenges
• decrease traumatic life events
• increase understanding of these mental health challenges and decrease stigma
• raise participants' level of hope and encourages their actively working toward wellness
• increase participants' sense of personal responsibility and empowerment

Objectives

The following topics are covered using a workshop style, including presentations, demonstrations, interactive discussion and related activities:

• hope, personal responsibility, , education, self-advocacy, and support
• accessing good health care and managing medications
• self-monitoring using WRAP: A Wellness Recovery Action Plan (an individualized system for monitoring and responding to symptoms to achieve the highest possible levels of wellness)
• wellness tools, include finding and keeping a strong support system, peer counseling, focusing, relaxation exercises, diet, light, exercise, sleep, journaling, music, etc.
• dealing with the effects of trauma
• suicide prevention
• building self-esteem
• changing negative thought patterns to positive
• building a lifestyle that promotes wellness

Expected Long Term Outcomes

WRAP shifts the focus in mental health care from 'symptom control' to prevention and recovery. The result is significant reduction in the need for costly mental health and emergency services as people who experience mental health challenges effectively take responsibility for their own wellness by using a variety of self-help techniques and reach out for and use the support of a network of family members, friends, and health care providers. The result is significant life enhancement, gains in self-esteem, and self-confidence as people become contributing members of the community.

Mental Health Recovery Seminars

Intensive five-day seminars teach people how to facilitate Mental Health Recovery and WRAP groups. Trainings are held in Brattleboro, VT, around the country, and around the world by The Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery.

 

Key Recovery Concepts

Five key recovery concepts provide the foundation of effective recovery work.

Hope - People who experience mental health difficulties get well, stay well and go on to meet their life dreams and goals.

Personal Responsibility - It's up to you, with the assistance of others, to take action and do what needs to be done to keep yourself well.

Education - Learning all you can about what you are experiencing so you can make good decisions about all aspects of you life.

Self Advocacy - Effectively reaching out to others so that you can get what it is that you need, want and deserve to support your wellness and recovery.

Support - While working toward your wellness is up to you, receiving support from others, and giving support to others will help you feel better and enhance the quality of your life.

Wellness Recovery Action Plan®

Through careful observation you will discover the things you need to do every day to keep yourself well, external events that may make you feel badly, early warning signs that let you know you are not feeling well, and signs that let you know you are feeling much worse. With this knowledge and by using the Wellness Tools you have discovered for yourself you will be able to develop a Wellness Recovery Action Plan that will help you feel well more often and move forward with your recovery. This will include listings of:

• those things you need to do every day to keep yourself well, such as eating three healthy meals and getting a half-hour of exercise
• external events that could make you feel worse (triggers), such as an argument with a friend or getting a big bill
• Wellness Tools that might keep this event from making you feel worse
• Early Warning Signs - such as irritability or anxiety that indicate you might be starting to feel badly, and a response plan
• signs that indicate the situation is getting much worse, such as reckless behavior or isolation, and an action plan to stabilize the situation.

You can also develop a personal crisis plan to be used when you need others to take over responsibility for your care. Your crisis plan includes:

• a list of your supporters, their roles in your life, and their phone numbers
• a list of all medications you are using and information on why they are being used
• signs that let your supporters know they need to make decisions for you and take over responsibility for your care
• instructions that tell your supporters what you want them to do.