Mental Health Recovery : A Marathon Not a Sprint – May 2019 reblog # 26

When I compare each year to the previous one, I measure our progress and remind myself that the road to recovery is a marathon not a sprint. After three months of three separate hospitalizations from the fall of 2010 through the spring of 2011, Drew continued to deny his diagnosis and refuse medication. For about three years, we spun our wheels, going nowhere fast, and our family bus broke down.In the summer of 2014, Drew agreed, as a condition for continuing to live at home, to see a psychologist weekly. In the fall of 2014, with some arm twisting of another kind, Kody accompanied me tothe12-week NAMI Family-to-Family class. ByJanuary of 2015 with encouragement from his psychologist Dr. Hanna (which I may have instigated), Drew started aNAMI class of his own, 10-weeks,Peer-to-Peer.The wheels on the bus went round and round and forward once more.

Each Tuesday night, I drove Drew…