self-compassion – MGH Center of Excellence for Psychosocial and Systemic Research

What’s in a recovery story?

For the past 15 years, the MGH Schizophrenia Program has hosted an annual Public Education Day for individuals with lived experience and their families. Without a doubt, the most popular component of this event that has been a panel of 3-4 people with lived experience talking about their recovery. This positive reception and my own reactions over the years as a clinician to hearing about and witnessing the journey from struggling to recovery has made me reflect on the function of recovery stories…

Recovery Story: Ryan Markley

“I am a single mom, artist, and consumer of a broken mental healthcare system for over 40 years. Most of my life, I struggled with extreme emotional states, severe mood fluctuations, suicidal thoughts, unusual experiences, and the side effects of a myriad of psychiatric medications…

Recovery Story: August Rosenberg

“I grew up in an expressive, thoughtful household. I was always interested in creativity and thinking. But as I entered my teens, I started smoking pot. I had found excitement in learning until sophomore year of high school, when I became reserved and felt as though existence was meaningless. Everything was grey…

Recovery Story: Anne Whitman

“At the age of 33, I was running education programs at Harvard Business School (HBS), married, and mother of a new baby daughter. Shortly after I gave up nursing my daughter, I began to feel that my house and HBS were under electronic surveillance so I asked the Dean to bring in the police to investigate…

Per aspera ad astra – Through hardship to the stars: The role of psychiatry on the long and stony road towards recovery

“Recovery” is one of those tricky words in mental health. It carries a generally positive connotation to some, but not all, and means different things to different people. Some equate recovery with being “cured,” returning to a former state of wellness, or as synonymous with no longer needing psychiatric medications. Others conceptualize recovery as the development of self-acceptance, meaning and purpose in the face of adversity. In this opinion piece, I examine my own use of the term recovery…