Mike Massey has been facilitating SMART Recovery Online (SROL) meetings since 2013. His professional experience as a former teacher and union leader, as well as his personal experience with substance use, gave him the skills and abilities to help meeting participants. When many of the participants said they also were dealing with a mental health disorder, he struggled with how best to help them and decided there needed to be a reference guide for facilitators on how to handle this aspect of recovery. So, he and several others created one: Facilitator Best Practices for Addressing Mental Health Disorders and Suicide in SMART Recovery Meetings.
In this podcast, Mike talks about:
- What led to writing the Facilitator Best Practices for Addressing Mental Health Disorders and Suicide in SMART Recovery Meetings
- Most facilitators are not experts or professional therapists, but should have a familiarity with mental health disorders
- People coming to the meeting for hope and inspiration
- Reframing the terms of mental health
- Two types of stigma – self and society
- Searching for patterns and reasons for addictions
- Asking participants, “What do you need to get through this?”
- The mystery and magic of being in a meeting
- Doing a better job of helping others help themselves
- How to handle the mention of suicide
- Contributors in writing the guide, including the QPR Institute
- Finding the guide on VolunteerHQ
Additional resources:
- ABC of Urges
- Motivational interviewing
- Cost Benefit Analysis
- Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT)
- Destigmatizing addiction
- Becoming a facilitator
- Facilitator Manual
- Addiction and Co-occurring Disorders from a SMART Recovery Perspective
- Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
Click here to find all of SMART Recovery’s podcasts
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IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you or someone you love is in great distress and considering self-harm, please call 911 for immediate help, or reach out to The National Suicide Prevention Hotline @ 800-273-8255, https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
We look forward to you joining the conversation!
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Hello, I am very much interested in registering to the podcast, but registering is just too complicated. So sorry.
Hello Irene,
You email is registered to receive emails when new podcasts are published. You can also find them at https://smartrecovery.libsyn.com/
It is so true that recovery is an incredibly complex struggle, and adding a co-existing mental health issue only adds to my admiration of people who engage in recovery and its struggle, many times over.
I do not see any of us, myself included, as making finite “attempts” at sobriety. But maybe, from a friend, peer, family member or health care provider’ s view it can feel overwhelming to revisit what feels like the same steps, same barriers again and again.
So, how can we keep the momentum in recovery for all of us, in spite of the challenge? First, healthcare providers must be in tune with their own reactions, seek professional emotional support for burn out.
The reality is that sobriety and recovery often take longer paths with a second diagnosis. But, as SMART Recovery shows us, it is all about process, indeed, over and over and over. If we accept that this repetition is essential to recovery and that “attempts” are opportunities to learn, then we can give and receive the type of support that SMART Recovery offers.
Years ago I volunteered at a substance abuse clinic before entering grad school in psychology. One of the therapists shared the following short story (author unknown) :
I walked down a path one day, but fell into a dark, hollow hole. I was scared, struggled, could not get out for some time but managed to barely climb out. The next day, I walked down the same path, fell into the hole gain, but knew how to get out. The next day, as I was walking, I saw the hole in the path, tripped but did not fall into it. The next day I walked down the path, saw the hole, passed it by and continued to walk.
….process takes time, longer for some.
Nice Blog and very informative