Articles
During this time of COVID-19, we are encouraging our peer support community, including WRAP® Facilitators, to promote maintaining social connection while practicing physical distancing. The Copeland Center will be expanding our current offerings of online resources to support our community with digital/remote options. We invite you as WRAP® Facilitators to reach out using remote access tools to continue supporting people who have participated in your in-person WRAP® groups.
In WRAP groups, a participant will likely hear facilitators use the phrase “choices and options” in response to many kinds of questions. In general, when we ask questions we want answers, meaning this response can be understandably frustrating. So why do we do it? Rest assured, it is not to frustrate, rather it is to empower each participant, knowing that they are the expert on themselves, to make their own choices and never limit their options.
Valuing Ourselves. Grace–for Others, Self and the Process. Part I
By Jenn Cusick of Luminate Wellness
From the WRAP Facilitator Manual – Values & Ethics Number 6:
“Treat them (participants) with dignity, compassion, respect and unconditional high regard.”
I’m going to spend most of this article on “unconditional high regard,” because I think those three words can be unpacked and pulled apart in a deep way. As with everything in WRAP, my words are not meant to give you final answers, but to instead, to encourage you to ponder what this means to you, and how does it play out in your life and work.
by Heather Smith, Advanced Level WRAP Facilitator
When I started this journey with WRAP 3 years ago, I was considered a “clinician” rather than a peer. I suppose it was a relatively new concept to include people in WRAP seminars that weren’t widely considered to be in the “peer” category. After a day of listening to Gina Calhoun, Copeland Center Director for Wellness and Recovery Education, tell me that I needed to shed my own personal labels and just listen to what WRAP was telling me, I gladly walked away from the idea that I had to be either a clinician or a peer. I stopped accepting that I had to be limited to one category or label. The group I was with started slowly coming to that same realization too and in what seemed like an instant, we started seeing each other as humans with experiences and feelings and needs and hurts and a desire to be well. That’s what bonded us (some of us still to this day, 3 years later!). We stopped excluding each other based on notions of who belonged and who didn’t.
The Temple University Collaboration on Community Inclusion of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities is doing a research study to learn more about to support students with mental health issues to help them succeed in school. Students who enroll in the study may have a chance to work with someone who will help them to set goals related to their education, relationships, mental health and campus life, and receive encouragement and support to achieve their goals.