About Us

Our Mission

to promote personal, organizational, and community wellness and empowerment.

We focus on shifting the system of mental health care toward a prevention and recovery focus. As the system shifts to reform through education, training, and research we use the accomplishments developed and implemented by the people being served and the people who care for them. We reinforce this by building networks that reflect mutual support and community organizational empowerment.

Copeland Center Staff

Mary Ellen Copeland

Mary Ellen Copeland is an author, educator and mental health recovery advocate. Her work is based on her on-going study of the day-to-day coping strategies of people who experience psychiatric symptoms, and how people have gotten well and stayed well. She undertook these studies out of her own frustration with dealing with her own recurring symptoms. She has achieved long term wellness and stability by using many of the coping strategies she learned while writing her books.

Mary Ellen develops resources and training programs based on her findings. She has traveled around the world with her husband, Ed Anthes, teaching recovery concepts, skills and strategies to people who experience symptoms, their supporters and care providers and is well known in the worldwide mental health recovery movement.

Mary Ellen is the author of many self help resources including:

• The Depression Workbook: A Guide to Living with Depression and Manic Depression,
• Living Without Depression and Manic Depression: A Guide to Maintaining Mood Stability,
• WRAP: Wellness Recovery Action PlanT,
• Wellness Recovery Action PlanT for People with a Dual Diagnosis,
• The Loneliness Control Workbook,
• Healing the Trauma of Abuse, and
• WRAP and Peer Support.
• She also worked with the Center for Mental Health Services to develop the popular booklet series, Self Help Guides to Recovering Your Mental Health.

Stephen Pocklington - Executive Director

Stephen Pocklington is recovery educator and is currently the executive director of the Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery. Before becoming the director of the Copeland Center Stephen was the deputy director of a public multi-county, multi-service human services agency that provided mental health, substance abuse and developmental disability services.  As deputy director, Stephen led his agency’s transformation into being a leader in recovery education and a provider of recovery-oriented services.

Stephen has worked within the mental health system for over 21 years, working in a wide variety of capacities.  Stephen has worked with all ages (from infants to seniors) and all populations (mental health, substance abuse, and developmental disabilities, including traumatic brain injury).  He has worked in direct services (special education, vocational training, residential services, case management, horticultural therapy); program management (supported employment, sheltered employment, residential services, psychosocial rehabilitation, early intervention with infants and toddlers, peer support and recovery education); and in administration, including quality management and staff development.   

As a person with lived experience with both mental health and substance challenges, Stephen has also been a leader in advocacy in North Carolina, bringing WRAP to his state and helping to establish peer support and self-advocacy groups in his community and around the state.  Stephen developed North Carolina's first peer support crisis alternative program and is still an advisor there. 

Stephen is a recipient of both state and national Leadership Awards from the Association for Persons in Supported Employment; The North Carolina Mental Health Consumers’ Association’s “Dorthea Dix Spirit Award” for Distinguished Statewide and Community Achievement; Two “Programs of Excellence” awards from the North Carolina Council of Community Programs; and was named Professional of the Year by his local Arc.

Stephen has a BA in English and Philosophy, and is a thesis shy of a Master's degree in Existential Phenomenology.  Stephen is married to the woman of his dreams; he has three wonderful daughters, two gifted stepsons, and he is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his first grandson in April 2006.

Nancy Haldeman - Program Coordinator, Business Manager

Nancy has worked in the Administrative Support field throughout her career in both the United States and in South America. Much of her experience has been in the professional services industry, balanced with a variety of roles in charitable organizations, principally as a volunteer worker. She brings energy, compassion and enthusiasm along with customer service to the Copeland Center.

Copeland Center Trainers, Speakers & Consultants

View a list of our trainers, speakers & consultants on our Speakers & Consultations page.