James R. High, M.D. is in psychiatric practice in Santa Monica, California. He teaches at the University of Southern California of Medicine, and is a member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Dr. High's specialty is working with patients who have experienced both recent and childhood traumatic stress.

Question: How did you first hear of Recovery, Inc.?

Answer: Over ten years ago, I witnessed a demonstration of the self-help method at a volunteer program put on by Recovery members at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. I was impressed both by the members and the importance of what Recovery techniques attempt to do for people.

Question: Can Recovery techniques be helpful in traumatic experiences such as rape or natural disasters?

Answer: When severely traumatized as adults, people often experience two seemingly opposing emotional problems. At times they are hyperaroused, hyperexcited and cannot stop thinking about or re-experiencing the trauma. At other times however, they are numbed and withdrawn, sometimes to the point of nonfunctioning. These people could benefit from Recovery's method of changing thought patterns and the focus on correcting the processing of symptoms. Unfortunately, these people often do not seek help, though these symptoms disrupt lives and cause misery.

Question: How does being subjected to trauma as a child, such as in child abuse, differ from being traumatized as an adult?

Answer: In childhood, mechanisms to control emotions, thought, and behavior are being formed and perfected. Abuse and neglect during these years, disrupts this maturation. Recent research has shown that as adults, these people typically show problems in seven areas: 1) alteration and regulation of moods and impulses; 2) alterations in attention or consciousness; 3) alterations of self perception; 4) alterations in their perception of the perpetrators of abuse; 5) alterations in their relations with others; 6) alterations in their experience of their own body (psychosomatic illnesses); 7) alterations in their systems of meaning.

Question: What do people learn at Recovery meetings that helps them with these problems?

Answer: The Recovery program focuses on correcting errors in the processing of experiences, including symptoms. Members learn techniques for practically, specifically, and effectively controlling excessive stimulus-response patterns by discussing daily life events and help each other apply cognitive and behavioral principles to the management of their moods and impulses. Thus, Recovery methods can attack a central problem survivors have by helping to repair and mature damaged control mechanisms.

Question: Can the Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) gain from Recovery techniques?

Answer: Absolutely. It appears that the vulnerable years for the seven areas of disruption I outlined above, extend up to about age 20. This turns out to be crucial. World War II combat veterans were 21 years old on the average, whereas in Vietnam, they averaged 19 years old. This means they missed the final formative years when they should have been stabilizing their self-concepts and world view -- all things we learn in the first two or three years after high school by getting jobs, going to college, living away from our parents, etc. Plus, the environment they returned to for recovery was hostile and non-supportive, so they did not recover well. Dr. Low's principles can be just as helpful to the Vietnam veteran still suffering 25 years later as to the adult victim of past child abuse.

Question: Are there any general benefits that Recovery, Inc. can provide to victims of trauma?

Answer: There are several important ones. For these patients, the recovery environment is extremely important to their outcome. Because of their disordered functioning, many of them live painfully isolated and lonely lives, within social support systems which are useless in helping them cope with their chaos. Dr. Low's pioneering cognitive behavioral approaches, learned through Recovery, Inc. training, can provide them with the first tools they have ever had to control this chaos. Furthermore, the mere existence of an international organization, providing regular meetings, with members struggling with the same issues, in almost any city in the country, can provide just the safe haven and recovery environment so lacking in their lives. This is not something that an individual therapist or even an entire university department of psychiatry can do, but it is essential to their recovery.
 
 

PHYSICIAN IS SENIOR PARTNER IN RECOVERY'S AFTERCARE METHOD

The history of recovery for tens of thousands of psychiatric patients is enveloped in the history of Recovery, Inc., founded in 1937 by late neuropsychiatrist, Abraham A. Low, M.D. This newsletter is designed to share a little of Recovery's history as an explanation of the present and the importance of a method that stresses the role of the physician as a partner in the patient's recovery. It's a history that continues to influence the lives of Recovery members decades after they were first active in Recovery's weekly support group meetings.

Dr. Abraham A. Low, associate professor of psychiatry and assistant director of the Psychiatric Institute of the University of Illinois Medical School, Chicago, IL, was also Assistant State Alienist in Illinois, overseeing the state hospitals of Illinois from 1931 to 1941. The mental health system experienced the same problems then as today. There were too many relapses of the post psychotic patients and sustained chronicity of the psychoneurotic patient (to use terms from the 1930's). To counter this, Dr. Low found himself breaking from the politically correct Freudian psychiatry of the day because (1) it took too much time, (2) it cost too much, (3) it didn't reach the masses, and (4) it often didn't work. Instead, the search for a better solution evolved into what has become Recovery, Inc., entrusted with the psychiatric self-help knowledge systematized and articulated by Dr. Low.

When patients were ready to be discharged from the Psychiatric Institute, Dr. Low would interview them and provide them with information and techniques to avoid relapse. He asked

questions of each individual during his one-on-one interviews. Recovery, Inc. was born on November 7, 1937 when Dr. Low initiated asking questions by involving 30 patients together.

Through the group process, Dr. Low found there was a multiplication of benefits and he could present maximum information and training to a group in contrast to the time constraint of seeing one-on-one. Recovery evolved over a 15 year period, from 1937 to 1952, as a medically-directed organization. In 1952, Dr. Low established Recovery as a completely self-help method. Recovery's purpose remains the same today as in 1937: to prevent relapses of the former mental patient and chronicity in the nervous patient.

Recovery, Inc. was designed and continues to function as a self-help aftercare support group.

Among the main tenets upon which it was founded are:

• The physician alone has the medical knowledge and experience to know whether symptoms relate to physical or non-organic, functional symptoms. Patients are not to make their own diagnosis nor prognosis.

• Recovery's self-help training is designed in the realm of trivialities of everyday life events only, where no advice, counseling, diagnosis or treatment is given (that is preserved for the professional). Patients are encouraged to cooperate with their professional in taking prescribed medications and adhering to treatment plans.

Patients are encouraged to attend Recovery meetings to re-establish their own self-leadership based upon/adhering to the psychiatric knowledge and information found in Recovery's literature, written by Dr. Low. Recovery supplements/compliments/augments, but does not replace, the work of the professional.

Recovery's training includes the techniques of changing beliefs and controlling muscles. For example, a member may change the "belief of danger in nervous symptoms," to the belief, "there is no danger, only discomfort, in psychiatrically diagnosed symptoms," i.e. one can bear the discomfort of these symptoms and move their muscles to function.

Recovery members demonstrate that the patient need not let functional symptoms incapacitate him, assuming the patient is ready for self-help.

The Recovery, Inc. philosophy operates with a concept of shared responsibility. The patient accepts his/her self-leadership responsibility while the professional exercises professional responsibility. Recovery members are encouraged to accept the authority of and to cooperate with their professional at all times. The group reminds the member who doesn't, that it is sabotage against his own goal of mental health.

Recovery, Inc. salutes the professionals and expresses appreciation to them for being the senior partner working with the patients as the junior partners to achieve the goal of good mental health. Thank you.

MANHATTAN PSYCHIATRIC CENTER INVITES RECOVERY REPRESENTATIVE TO GIVE GRAND ROUNDS

Zebulon Taintor, M.D., Chief of Staff at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, Wards Island, and professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of New York University Medical Center, invited Joan Nobiling, Recovery, Inc. First Vice President to give Grand Rounds. As part of the hospital's autumn series, Ms. Nobiling spoke on the "Models of Recovery." She described how applying Recovery, Inc. techniques permitted her to return to family, work and community life. She emphasized that a person is able to go beyond an illness, for patients who take self-management seriously. This is the rule rather than the exception.

Earlier this year, Joan Nobiling was also chosen by the International Association of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services (IAPSRS) to receive their 1994 Consumer Advocate Award. The Award, presented at the IAPSRS Annual Convention in New Mexico, is in recognition of her "exemplary leadership as the former Director of Operation Friendship." At Operation Friendship she operated and sustained community programs and supports for mental health consumers. IAPSRS had this to say about their award winner: "Joan has always shared openly her mental health experiences. Her acknowledgment of her own past difficulties and obviously successful management of them, have offered hope to many."

As the award winner, Joan presented a workshop where she explained how and why Recovery, Inc.'s self-help method is an excellent adjunct to professional care. This union of professional and self-care incorporates the psychosocial rehabilitation philosophy.
 
 

International Headquarters: 802 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, IL 60610 - 312/337-5661 • FAX 312/337-5756 RECOVERY, INC. IS A COQ MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCE OFFERING A SELF-HELP METHOD OF WILL TRAINING

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