I'm Pat, the founder of Pat Deegan & Associates. I'm on a mission. My mission is to help empower mental health services users in their own recovery and to provide peer supporters and clinicians with the know-how to support people in their recovery journey.
I'm uniquely positioned to fulfill my vocation because I was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager, went on to get my doctorate in clinical psychology and today lead a company run by and for people in recovery. I am a thought-leader in the field of mental health recovery, have numerous peer-reviewed publications, have held a number of academic appointments, and have carried a message of hope for recovery to audiences around the world.
I never really liked the word disability. To me being diagnosed with sz is a challenge to recover from! Having said that I did enjoy your video about the value of voting as if our lives depended on it!
Proud of you❤ but is recovery really possible for all patients? I truly feel hopeless and helpless and been only existing since my diagnosis or my break from reality . i desperately want this to change 😔
Hi @MA-qw6cb - I do believe that recovery is real and that it's possible to live our lives, not our diagnosis. Our diagnosis does not define. I encourage you to check out Augusto D. Mello's new book: Mental Health Recovery on a Bus Ride. It's short, sweet, and lots of good advice to get started: a.co/d/0rzbuZl
I really appreciate this perspective Pat.Someone once suggested to me that if we think about it, all of us naturally transform into a new kind of person every 7 years or so (think about who we were at 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 etc). Therefore, you could safely assume that a person diagnosed with any sort of diagnosis at 16 or 20, will be similarly changing in their core personality throughout the years. I think heavy medication (in response to a diagnosis) can mask these changes and I suspect many people who have been heavily medicated for 20 or 30 years may be quite different people underneath the medication haze, than they were when first diagnosed. It is incredibly difficult to get the right sort of assistance to wean off meds (here in Australia, at least), which would allow us to gauge these natural maturation changes. So I'm particularly grateful to see this year's introduction of the Maudsley DEprescription Manual to advising medicos how to help people safely withdraw from prescription drugs.
Thank you for the hope. I just found out about you today at my mental clinic and was instructed to try the personal medicine program. I’m looking forward to it.
Wow!! I love this !! Truly these ideas from this series, " I am a Person " are empowering and transformational!! If we can get these tools to our mental health providers what a difference in the outcomes we would experience!! Thank you for giving me hope for my loved ones and friends.
Love this !! Illnesses do not recover. People do. I watched your Common Ground video from 11 years ago. I have walked the journey of treatments and hospitalizations with my son for the last 20 years and if this would of been presented to him how different his life may have been. What matters to me!! How empowering. Thanks for your work of service Pat and for posting these videos. ❤
My name is jeremy thurlow. I knew steven shueman he was a kind soul and definitely a genius. I hung with steve rip. Joe Hinckley rip. And Martin Rembis whom i believe is still living, i love you guys forever thank you than you. Thank you.
