A Journey of Recovery becomes a Mission to Promote the Recovery Approach
To affect real change requires more than just talk. One must put words into action and 'walk the walk'. Rona McBriety has done just that. After years in Scotland's mental health system, Rona discovered the recovery approach to mental illness, experienced success with the approach and now promotes it at conferences and training sessions.
Rona's referral to psychiatric services in her early 20's with 'difficult pain' resulted in guilt and shame. While the pain was real, no physical cause could be found. In the system "my main aim was to get it right - to say the right things. I believed that if I could create the answers that they were looking for I would be fixed. I was trying to please." Rona became trapped in a cycle of finding the correct answers, leaving a program for a while but ending up back in the system. After more than a decade, she learned why it was not working for her. "I realised that I had to heal; that there were real issues in me that had to be dealt with."
Rona's experience with mental health services was trying. She found that hospitalization and dependency often added to her issues rather than solve them. Hoping that she might find a solution to her difficulties, she got involved in the mental health community in a way that was not directly about herself. In 2000, she attended a conference in Edinburgh where she heard Christine Gayler speak. "Christine described a program in Sweden where people with mental illness were trying to find purpose in their life. People received choice and responsibility. At that point I was quite low and had no confidence but I went up to Christine at the end and thanked her."
Christine's speech was the beginning of Rona's journey of recovery. Rona continued to attend conferences on the recovery approach to mental illness, learned self-care strategies and applied them in her life. By the time she reconnected with Christine in 2005 "I understood the importance of having hope and purpose and the need to take care of myself."
After 15 years in the system and being unable to take employment, Rona is now working. "Christine saw the potential in me to be out there. That made the difference. That allowed me to have hope. In the system they were telling me the limits of my life. What I couldn't do and couldn't achieve. Christine believed in what I could do." Her work gives Rona a real sense of purpose in life. She is educating nurses and support workers on the recovery approach to mental illness. "I'm trying to get them to integrate recovery into their practice. I'm suggesting ways that they can change and give back the responsibility to the people they are working with."
Rona is also expanding her reach internationally. She recently traveled to Canada for the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership conference which was focused on providing leadership and an international infrastructure that promote recovery.
Since reconnecting in 2005, Rona and Christine have become friends, colleagues and are now moving towards being associates. In speaking about Rona's past and exciting future, Christine comments: "Increasingly, I'm appreciating that who I am is even more important than what I do. Recovery is all about being 'human', about real relationships. It is in 'soft' ways that I achieve my vision to inspire others to live magnificent lives and my mission to transform mental health communities and strengthen their capacity to heal."
For Rona, recovery has meant choice in her life, work and education - many opportunities that were not open to her with the former approach to her illness. Her recovery has also created the opportunity to help others. "I've tried to show people that, just because you've been in the system for a good number of years doesn't mean that you can't break free. I want people to know that recovery is possible and that people with mental illness can be worthwhile for themselves and for society."