In this issue:
- Welcome from Caroline Nicholson, DRLC Manager
- Meet the tutor: Olga Zilberberg
- Recovery Reading: review of Michael Rosen’s Many Different Kinds of Love: Life, Death, and the NHS by Helen Sims, DRLC Librarian
- October awareness events: World Mental Health Day 2021 - Mental Health in an Unequal World, “Hello Yellow!” with Young Minds, OCD Awareness Week
- Inspiration Station: Inspirational thoughts to get you through the tough times, chosen by Esther Waring
- Upcoming courses and dates for your diary
 Welcome to Devon Recovery Learning News, a new newsletter from the Devon Recovery Learning Community (DRLC), provided by Devon Partnership NHS Trust. But what is ‘recovery learning’? To understand this, we first need to know what we mean by ‘recovery’. Recovery is a word with many definitions depending on context. In the context of mental health, we can talk about clinical recovery and personal recovery. Clinical recovery involves medical interventions, therapies and treatments to help manage a condition or diagnosis and reduce symptoms. Personal recovery is an idea that emerged from the expertise of people with lived experience of mental illness. Personal recovery has been described as ‘a deeply personal, unique process of changing one’s attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills, and/or roles. It is a way of living a satisfying, hopeful and contributing life, even within the limitations caused by illness.’ (Bill Anthony, 1993)
Simply put, recovery means ‘living well’. Recovery learning, then, is about learning to live well.
How can we learn to live well? At DRLC we have carefully designed a Recovery curriculum that aims to promote learning for the wellbeing of the whole person. People enrol on our courses as students, not patients. We do not take referrals from health practitioners and people do not need to be accessing mental health services to attend any of our courses. Courses about understanding your medication, treatments and diagnosis sit beside courses about developing knowledge and skills, finding meaning, employment and vocation, getting involved and ‘Wild Things!’, a programme of courses that challenge the mind and the body through more adventurous physical and intellectual activity. The aim of recovery education is to open doors to opportunity, instil hope, offer choice, connect with others, to find meaning and enjoy life, and to help give you the reins for living your life well.
Finally, co-production and co-delivery is a key value and defining principle of our recovery learning approach. We expect all our courses to be informed by the voice of relevant lived experience together with that of experience as a mental health practitioner. Students will observe that all our courses are co-delivered by a minimum of two tutors. These co-tutors bring an understanding of recovery values and principles, experience or qualification in teaching or training, and specialist subject knowledge. Understandably, no one tutor would reasonably be expected to deliver on this broad set of skills without the support of a co-tutor, nor is it always possible or best practice. Co-production allows tutors to draw on the skills in which they are most expert without compromising on those skills a second tutor would be able to bring. The result is teaching that is rich and varied, and a learning environment that is safe, welcoming, recovery-focused and personal to its students.
Behind the scenes we have our patient and friendly admin team, answering the phones, taking bookings, looking after our social media pages and uploading new courses onto our website. You can always stay up-to-date about our learning opportunities by visiting our website. We also have an active Facebook page where we share news about upcoming courses, recovery events and activities. This bulletin offers another opportunity to reach our recovery learning community. I am especially grateful to Esther Waring, Bank Peer Trainer, who has graciously taken on the role of contributing editor to this newsletter. I will let Esther introduce herself in her own time, but you can glimpse her wisdom and creativity that abounds in weekly musings she wrote throughout lockdown and which you can enjoy in the flip book designed in co-production by Tim Croft, our very own DRLC administration team member.
I will finish with a favourite quote of mine from American Blues musician, B.B. King, "The beautiful thing about learning is no one can take it away from you." The learning you take away from our courses is yours to keep and can help make tomorrow different, maybe even better, for yourself and for others.
With love and much hope for the days and months ahead,
Caroline Nicholson, Manager, Devon Recovery Learning Community
*Caroline is pictured with Patrick the miniature Shetland Pony who will be visiting the Recovery Learning Community at our drop-ins and future events. He is looking forward to visiting the Activity Centre at Wonford House Hospital later in the year.
Role: Recovery College Tutor for several Recovery Colleges in the country
About my courses: I run clinical courses on subjects like anxiety, panic attacks, stress, depression and low mood, understanding ADHD, and wellbeing courses to support our mental health on subjects like self compassion, nurturing relationships, mindfulness, happiness and even parenting courses to support parental mental health and enhance family dynamics.
Background: I am a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner with lived experience of mental health challenges. I am also a trained family support worker and a mindfulness practitioner and I love learning. I live in Berkshire, not sunny Devon, and hence my courses are delivered online with a group of Devon based co-tutors, for which I am extremely grateful and privileged. My passion is working with people and supporting them to find their own ways of recovery, by providing informative courses packed with techniques, strategies and time to discuss and talk to others walking the recovery journey themselves.
Recovery means: Recovery means personal growth. I would never have learnt so much about myself if I had not experienced the challenges that I did. Yes, it can be messy and difficult but it is possible. Keep working on yourself and discover the authentic you. It is an amazing experience.
My wellbeing tip: Olga says, “Be kind to yourself. It is OK to have bad days and when you do, talk softly and compassionately to yourself as you would to a good friend and, when you hear your inner critic being harsh, take a deep breath in, place your hands on your heart and say to yourself 'This is a difficult moment and I CHOOSE to be kind to myself'. GO and do something that makes you feel good.”
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Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death, and the NHS
By Michael Rosen (poet and author of ‘We’re Going On a Bear Hunt’ and many other titles.) Ebury Publishing 2021. ISBN: 9781529109450.
A Review by Helen Sims, Recovery Librarian
I bought this book after hearing Michael talk movingly about his experience of COVID-19. It is essentially a book about Recovery, in all senses - mentally, physically, life-affirming - so this special copy (signed by Michael) now belongs to the Recovery Library. I urge you to borrow it!
The first half of the book impresses on me how close we came to losing Michael Rosen to COVID-19, which should never, ever be taken lightly. He writes about trust, placing ourselves in the hands of others, and the kindness of strangers. Michael wrote a poem, pre-COVID-19, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the NHS, ‘These Are The Hands’ (included on the back of the book) and I was struck by how prophetic this work turned out to be. Except, fortunately for him and for us, the last line has not come to pass.
The second part of the book explains, with humour, how recovery can slide back and forth, with acceptance, set-backs, determination and tremendous effort. But he also tells us about the love, support and dedication of so many others who all made a huge contribution. Michael’s son Eddie died (aged 18) a while ago, but even Eddie has a role in Michael’s journey through recovery.
I hope you are both moved and entertained by this recovery story – and I’m so glad we have Michael Rosen with us still. Enjoy!
Devon Recovery Learning Community has a fabulous library of recovery-themed books to help support you on your journey. To borrow any of our titles, please visit our Recovery Library and drop-in at St Sidwell’s Community Centre in Exeter or find our extensive recovery library online below. Our Recovery Library and drop-in is open every Wednesday from 1:00pm – 5:00pm.
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It is the intention that a focus on this particular area - Mental Health in an Unequal World - will help to open up meaningful conversation about how mental health care can rise to the challenge of meeting the needs of communities with equity, giving everyone a better chance at improved access to necessary care and treatment, and better mental health, whatever their background or circumstances.
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Young Minds are aiming to brighten lives by encouraging supporters to say, “Hello Yellow!” for young people. On 8 October, to fit in with World Mental Health Day, they are organising an effort to wear your brightest buttercups, bananas and neons to work in order to raise funds for their charitable work. Take a selfie and post on social media using #HelloYellow - don’t forget to tag us @YoungMindsUK – and donate what you can to YoungMinds.
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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) awareness week runs from 10-16 October. The week is about bringing greater understanding of the condition and how it affects people. It affects 1 in 100 people in the UK alone. It is an anxiety disorder and can be very distressing and debilitating for those who experience it. Apply for the DRLC course on panic and anxiety on our website.
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Join us on the afternoon of Wednesday 27 October to celebrate DRLC's Recovery Fest. Taking place at St Sidwell's Community Centre in Exeter from 12 noon to 5pm come along for an afternoon of fun and fundraising for DRLC.
Come and explore stalls selling cakes, homemade jams, plants, books and crafts. Try your hand at fun activities. Meet our special guest, Patrick the Miniature Shetland Pony (as pictured above with Caroline.) Patrick is a new addition to our team of partners and is helping us to engage with students to offer support and comfort. He will be joining us at our drop-ins and other events in the future too.
Inspiration station chosen by Esther Waring
Promise by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Through the moil and the gloom they have issued
To the steps of the upwinding hill,
Where the sweet, dulcet pipes of tomorrow
In their preluding rhapsodies trill.
With a thud comes a stir in the bosom,
As there steals on the sight from afar,
Through a break of a cloud’s coiling shadow
The gleam of a bright morning star!
(This poem is in the public domain.)
Poetry has often been a source of comfort to me during difficult times. I love words and language, and find that pausing to reflect on the words of another can teach me a lot about my own experience.
Promise by Georgia Douglas Johnson feels full of hope and the promise of a better, brighter tomorrow.
‘Where a man can live, he can also live well.’
This quote from stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, seems to fit with my idea of what personal recovery is (gendered language notwithstanding!) We may not have much control over our circumstances, we may be living in a situation or with a health condition that is far from what we had ideally envisioned, but we are living and we can learn to live well.
It links in with another favourite piece of idiom, ‘while there's life, there's hope.’ This can be taken as meaning that as long as one is alive, then there remains the hope of recovery or improvement, regardless of what traumas, mistakes or misfortunes happened in the past, or that as long as someone or something has not completely failed or come to ruin, a less than ideal situation still has a chance of getting better. As someone who has come pretty close to having completely ‘come to ruin’ as a result of instability in my mental health, I find that keeping these thoughts in mind helps me to keep going on my recovery journey.
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Online courses
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In person courses
For more information or to book a place on any courses, please visit the course calendar and register your details. Or you can ring to speak with a friendly member of our admin team Mon-Thurs, 10-2 on 01392 677067. No answer? Please leave us a message and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Or email us at dpn-tr.drlc@nhs.net
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