lived experience

Peers as Professionals: Workplace Success

The CAFE TA Center is pleased to present its newest online training,  Peers as Professionals: Workplace Success. There are many challenges for people with lived experience when it comes to engaging with the behavioral health workforce. Peer professionals want to remain true to the principles of recovery, help those they work with build on their strengths […]

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Focus: Peers at the Center of New Approaches to Coordinated Care

It’s no secret that we live in an extraordinarily dynamic moment for behavioral health, and the healthcare system in general. Major changes to healthcare laws, including the Affordable Care Act and mental health parity legislation, have opened up access to behavioral health care. At the same time, the value of lived experience as a professional

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Recovery Stories – Episode 7: A Message to the Outside World

The CAFE TA Center is pleased to release the seventh and final video in its Recovery Stories series. In this segment, people with lived experience speak out about what they think the world needs to know about recovery. While recovery is a familiar concept for people in the peer support movement, those outside the behavioral

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Make Your Voice Heard through Boards, Committees and Councils

One of the goals of the mental health consumer movement is to change the system. People with lived experience want a more compassionate system of care, that sees people with mental health challenges as experts in their own lives, relies on recovery principles, and considers the strengths of an individual as a whole person, instead

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Recovery Stories – Episode 5: The Medical Model & Resistance to Recovery

In the fifth installment of Recovery Stories, people with lived experience respond to the question “What would it take for the recovery model to truly take hold?” Before the concept of recovery evolved, many individuals’ experience of treatment left them feeling that they were fundamentally broken, and that their only recourse would be a lifetime

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Recovery Stories – Episode 2: The Road to Recovery

The CAFE TA Center is pleased to announce the release of the second video in its ongoing series, Recovery Stories. This series of videos, all of which were assembled from interviews of people with lived experience of mental health challenges at the 2013 Alternatives conference, provides a platform for people to share their individual experience

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Recovery Stories – Episode 1: What Does Recovery Mean for You?

At the 2013 Alternatives conference in Austin, TX, The CAFE TA Center invited people with lived experience to share their thoughts on recovery. Dozens of people chose to participate, and offered their reflections on the recovery process, how the concept of recovery has changed their perspective on mental health, and what public policy makers and

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