Mental Health Recovery Moment
Strength Base
February 24, 2014

Good afternoon my name is David Burns, I’m a Peer Support Specialist here assigned to the CWT/IT Program, I would like to start by telling you a little about myself and what we do as Peer support specialist and to talk to you about Strength Base treatment. I use to work in the automobile industry for a number of years.

In 1997, at my “intake interview” at the VA Medical Center in Richmond, VA, my new treatment team asked me about my “recovery assets.” They did not talk about what was wrong with me. No clinician had ever asked me about recovery assets before. After talking for awhile
We found I had enough money, a reliable car, a safe affordable place to live, great intelligence and insight into my emotional and behavioral patterns, which they called “my illness,” And then they explained to me that I was a good candidate for cognitive therapies, recovery education, and peer support. This challenging, creative, socially useful work became the focus of my life after the automobile industry. My next challenge was finding people and things to add to the structure of my life. At the dealership, I burned out because my life was my work and my work was my job.

These steps threw my recovery, which began with a breakthrough in psychotherapy three weeks before I reached the VAMC, into irreversible high gear, At the time (not any more). I did not know it at the time, but these clinicians were practicing “strength-based treatment,” focusing on my assets, not my deficits. Treatment in the past had always been about compensating for weaknesses and deficits, not building a life from my strengths. I did not know this VAMC treated all their new clients this way.

I was thrilled when I left that session. “These people want to help me get well!” I said to myself. Later, I learned the expression strength-based treatment.
Peer recovery support services expand the capacity of formal treatment systems, e.g. medication assisted therapy, residential, therapeutic community and outpatient, by promoting the initiation of recovery, reducing relapse, and intervening early when relapse occurs. Peer leaders also provide social support to the recovering person’s family members.
Peer recovery support services are a crucial factor in helping people move along in their road to recovery. There are Four kinds of social support that we offer.
Emotional support—demonstrations of empathy, caring, and concern in such activities as peer mentoring and recovery coaching, as well as recovery support groups;
Informational support—provision of health and wellness information, educational assistance, and help in acquiring new skills, ranging from life skills to employment readiness and citizenship restoration (e.g., voting rights, driver’s license).
Instrumental support—concrete assistance in task accomplishment, especially with stressful or unpleasant tasks (e.g., filling out applications, obtaining public benefits) or providing supports such as child care, transportation to support group meetings, and clothing closets.
Affiliation support—opportunity to establish positive social connections with others in recovery so as to learn social and recreational skills in an alcohol- and drug-free environment.
Peer recovery support services provide social support to individuals at all stages on the continuum of change that constitutes the recovery process. Services may be provided at different stages of recovery and may:
Precede formal treatment, strengthening a peer’s motivation for change’s
Accompany treatment, providing a community connection during treatment;
Follow treatment, supporting relapse prevention; and be delivered apart from treatment to someone who cannot enter the formal treatment system or chooses not to do so.

I will try to answer any of your questions please.

Thank you for your time.