Psychiatric Survivors: Our History Matters-SCCORE
In 1989 the first statewide consumer/survivor organization in Colorado was founded. Statewide Consumers of Colorado Organized for Rights and Empowerment, known as S.C.C.O.R.E., lasted for nearly six years. S.C.C.O.R.E. brought us together. Mary Elizabeth Van Pelt tells her story of organizing Peer Support Groups in rural Colorado. She says, “I always wanted to make one more new connection and light one more spark of hope.” Our history is important, and when our stories and experiences are discounted by the system consumer/survivors must do the work to keep our history alive for each other and offer hope to the future.
TRANSCRIPT
I’m Mary Elizabeth Van Pelt and I wanna talk about support groups, I wanna talk about the power of peer support. I am a psychiatric survivor, a former mental patient, and after my first hospitalization, on a psych ward, it was six years before I met somebody that was on a path of recovery that had experienced as intense of a break as I had and was on a path of recovery and that person really helped spur me forward.
I’m gonna read just a little bit about the importance and power of peer support from my book In Silence I Speak. Peer Support is the idea that individuals who have successfully navigated the system and found their own path of recovery can help others find their way. In Denver I attended my first bipolar support group meeting where I quickly connected with strangers who truly understood what I was going through. It wasn’t long before I organized a support group in Alamosa. And that support group was affiliated with SCCORE. And this is a little bit of our Colorado history that’s really important to me. SCCORE was an organization that lasted not quite six years. Was organized in Denver. And because of SCCORE I was able to get little mini-grants, two hundred dollars at a time, and help facilitate support groups. We had a small group in Alamosa. We met every other week in my home for more than two years. So we’ve got quite a rich history. I’ve got a lot of photo albums with pictures and I was recently reviewing all the history and I was really struck by when I look at these photographs how close we are to each other and the sense of community that was between us as we traveled and met new people and talked about recovery. People were meeting for the first time somebody else that was diagnosed and so those little sparks of hope kept me going. I always wanted to meet one more new person and help somebody in our group or help somebody in a new group connect with our group and realize that they were not alone. So that was the peer support group work that we did and um my sadness is that we just discount this history and I think that it’s so–so valuable. What’s still valuable is the importance of peers connecting with peers and showing each other the way. And that can get caught up in a lot of negative in-fighting and the group can destroy itself and I think ultimately that’s what happened with SCCORE. But I still remember all the things that SCCORE helped me to do. Helped me make these trips and helped me connect with people at the national level. People like Rae Unzicker, Judi Chamberlin, David Oaks — Pat Risser was our first president and Bob Hiltner was our last president. We had six presidents during the-the lifetime of SCCORE. But the group did come to an end and I did finally decided that I needed to pass the photo albums on. And I-a I decided I would take them to a program at the Community Mental Health Center. It’s called the Clubhouse. It’s a pre-vocational program that teaches people basic living skills and employment skills and I decided that was where the photo albums belonged because there were still people around that had participated in the group activities who were still a part of the community mental health center. So I donated the photo albums to their library um and about six months later someone called me up and said oh they’re changing everything, they’re throwing things out, there’s new staff, there’s a new program, they’re gonna toss your photo albums, you’d better come get them. So I went and got them, but I felt really sad that it was like all the work that I had done, it wasn’t acknowledged, we weren’t acknowledged by the community mental health center. Our history was not valued and that was really very disappointing. So I brought the albums home and I’ve kept them for more years. But what do we do with this history? How much do we hold on to? What is of value? And I think what’s still of value is the connecting with others that-that peer support. And I find when I tell my stories that I find other people have experienced the same thing. The same struggles with agencies. The same struggles to connect with other people.
”I realized I’m not quite ready to think about The End.” But now I just see the end as a new beginning. I really do — looking over this history. Going out into the world in a bigger way.
I’m Mary Van Pelt. My book is In Silence I Speak. My website is www.InSilenceISpeak.com and my e-mail is mary@InSilenceISpeak.com
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