VIDEO RECOVERY STORIES
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MATTHEW JACKMAN. Matthew’s service user and carer journey began aged three as a result of having to care for his younger siblings having lost his mother to mental illness six years after experiencing severe post natal depression. He developed family and carer advocacy skills when coming into contact with mental health services for his teenage siblings to ensure they were provided with the best opportunities for recovery. He is passionate about human rights, social justice and its intersection with family and carer involvement at all levels of mental health services and broader systems. Matthew brings professional and lived experience skills and knowledge acquired through clinical roles at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health and Victorian Prisons as a Senior Social Worker/Counsellor, Group Therapist, support to the Consumer Consultant team and now the Family and Carer Advocate.
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KATHERINE PONTE. I was diagnosed with depression and then bipolar disorder over 15 years ago while a graduate student. Like so many of us, the stigma associated with mental illness kept me silent and in denial about my condition, making it only worse. Bipolar disorder impacted every aspect of my life. I felt alone and isolated. At times, I thought my life was over. At my lowest, I experienced suicidal depression. I lost hope. Accepting my family’s loving support and connecting with other people were critical to my recovery. The example of others taking on similar challenges gave me the hope that I could too. I was awed and inspired by the great courage and strength of our community. Once I finally achieved recovery, I realized that too many people like me continue to suffer in silence. But there is hope.
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Interview with Albert Ekema. Albert Ekema is from Cameroon. He was diagnosed with Schizophrenia at the age of 13 years and he will be turning 39 in December 2018. He has known numerous hospitalizations and has experienced so much marginalization, stigmatization and abuse, he doesn't even believe he could still be around at this age. Marie Abanga is the founder of the Association Hope for the Abused and Battered, with one of their focus area being Bringing Hope to those living with a mental illness or mental health challenge. She lives with PTSD herself, is on the executive committee of the Global Mental Health Peer Network representing Cameroon, is a lawyer, a psychotherapist, CBT Certified with distinctions and much more. She met Ekema while working at the lone psychiatric ward in Douala - Cameroon, and her spirit moved her to welcome Ekema into her home where she lives with her 4 sons.
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written recovery stories
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My life as a mental health consumer, carer, clinician and living experience academic: From personal madness to global mental health advocate.It was August 26th 2017, I lay in the back of my car ready to enter the spiritual world through the same means my mother had taken in 1999. I survived, a word that reflects my personal and family resilience having experienced a history littered with childhood abuse, violence, neglect, bullying and abandonment.
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