Personal Recovery Journey

The recovery journey of a mental health consumer can be the most challenging time of a person’s life. We may find it difficult to understand the struggles, feelings and thoughts of a consumer if we have never required the use of a mental health service ourselves. This essay will use my personal recovery plan, mini-journey and the experiences I’ve shared with my supporters to help demonstrate the importance of the consumer perspective. During this essay I will use relevant literature in conjunction with my own understanding to validate the weight of consumer driven recovery. I will evaluate what I found to be more and less beneficial to my mini-journey and compare it to that of a mental health consumer’s journey. This essay will outline the

It was also extremely effective in outlining the importance of the consumer perspective and the overall value of recovery orientated mental health practice. (CQU, 2015)

The area of my life that I chose to make a positive change in was my inability to be wise with money. This element of my life was something I had intended to work on for quite some time, and this mini-journey was the perfect way to kick-start my goal. I found this process to be exceptionally successful, but it didn’t come without its challenges.

When I began my mini-journey I considered myself to be in a good starting position for achieving my overall goal of saving money and paying off my debts. Even though I had been a compulsive buyer of materialistic items for over a decade, and hadn’t managed to save a cent, I was in complete realization of this. I knew what steps I had to take to break this cycle forever. When I recognized how much easier my journey would be compared to a consumer of lower socioeconomic status it had an enormous impact on my outlook. There are so many independent factors that may hinder a consumer’s recovery journey such as their employment, exposure to a traumatic event, economic and social status, drug addiction and living conditions. (Meyer, Castro-Schilo, & Aguilar-Gaxiola, 2014) As I am not faced

I received some really advantageous encouragement from my family member such as a new money tin to save all my spare change in, and my classmate was always available to contact if I wanted to consult about a purchase. Throughout my mini-journey I required very little assistance from my supporters. I felt as though I possessed the tools and the drive to achieve my goal without relying too much on anyone else. However, there were a few considerable moments that impacted my attitude toward my supporters. At times I felt like my family member was pushing me away by constantly questioning if I had purchased anything, or asking how much money I had saved. I found this to be slightly patronizing and overbearing, which actually deterred me from reaching out to him for support when I really required it. In complete contrast to this was the support provided by my classmate, who never enquired about my progress but was just there for reinforcement when I asked for it. This approach was more effective for me, however somewhere between the two would have been