Recommended Definition -- Recovery From Mental and Substance Use Disorders is a process of personal, relational and family healing that includes each striving to achieve their full potential and reconciliation.

Sis Wenger
National Association for Children of Alcoholics

Over 30 years ago mental health clinicians – social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and marriage and family counselors – began to name what they were seeing clinically: children with behavioral and mental health problems, teens who were depressed and suicidal, and adults with anxiety and relationship disorders, depression, and many with what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The ratio of persons being treated for these issues who identified as having an alcoholic parent was dramatically disproportionate to the general population. An increasingly clear correlation between these presenting problems and growing up in a family impacted by an addicted parent motivated the creation of a movement in the mental health and addiction prevention and treatment worlds, which culminated in the creation of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) Al-Anon, Alateen, family programs in treatment centers, and support groups in student assistance programs. These programs developed for one reason: Children and families living with the addiction of a loved one are profoundly impacted -- developmentally, emotionally, and interpersonally -- and all must be part of the recovery paradigm – or the “recovery” is narrow, not complete, and sets the family up not to stop the familial transmission of the disease, whether a mental health disorder or addiction.
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The psychic and sometimes physical health damage to impacted children and family members living with a loved one suffering from a mental health or addictive disorder – especially -- especially a parent -- requires healing and recovery support as do the persons afflicted with these disorders. This crucial point is ignored in the proposed definition of recovery from mental health or substance use disorders. The science is clear; the clinical research is clear; the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is clear. All affirm what the clinical world saw over 30 years ago – that children and families also need to recover from the effects of addiction. Yet, this overwhelming and growing evidence appears to be ignored in the proposed definition of recovery and in the four guiding principles for this definition.

Recovery From Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A process of personal, relational and family healing that includes each striving to achieve their full potential.

Recovery From Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A process of personal, relational and family healing that includes each striving to achieve their full potential.

National Health care, mental health care is equal and alternative health choices are free. We need to treat the whole body as one we can only do that if even the traditonaly have nots have access to all health care, dental and hearing as well as unlimited and quality mental health with no restrictions placed on numbers of days, or kinds of service, including hospitalization. It is ridiculous to think someone can be stabilized in less than 14 days when the medicine alone claims not to start working until 2-3 weeks after the first dose. Unless the person is safe and wants to go home no insurance should be removing anyone from a psychreatric hospital because of insurance, they do not tell a heart attack pateint to go home the 2nd day after a heart attack, there are not the same limits put on physical health, yet it has been proven that MI is physical and still it is being treated as an issue of personality and temperment. Treating a MI with medicine alone and ignoreing the rest of the body is just as outdated as the idea that somehow someone who is suicidal on Tuesday is ready to be discharged on Thursday, medicine or no medicine. Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, and can help the body as a whole relieveing stress, tension, pain, cravings, in this way so can Tai Chi, yoga, massage, Acupressure, whether in paitient outpatient or as a on going therapy all these things should be just as accessable to those who are traditionaly unemployed or underemployed as they are to those who can afford them as a way to avoid ever seeing a psychiatrist and never having to have that put on their health bill. To use these methods and treat the whole body and hopfuly maintain longer periods of remission along with any traditional methods should be accessable to every one and in the long run the possibility that this could be the cheaper way would be exciting. With more people getting treated as a whole and feeling better, possibly using less meds, feeling better, longer remisions, working, stable houseing, the list going on....Empower whole body health.