Being
able to live with the effects of mental health conditions such as; depression,
anxiety, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTS and PTSD), seems to come down to how we think and to a degree,
how we live our lives.
Sounds
simple, but it isn’t.
United
States born and based medical doctor, Neil Nedley, saw a statistical and
ever-worsening need for creating help to assist a growing, global problem.
Effective programme: The Nedley Depression and Anxiety Recovery Program offers more help for mental illness sufferers.
What
his research says is - a quarter of the US population, suffers from
disordered mental health issues. That’s a lot of people.
So,
he decided to come up with a programme, the Nedley Depression and Anxiety Recovery Program, to get on top of these often, debilitating and
exhausting illnesses.
Exhausting illnesses: Conditions such as anxiety can be ongoing and become tiring to sufferers, disrupting all or many areas of life, including sleep.
He
bases his programme, which is currently being run in four New Zealand centres including Dargaville in Northland, around ‘hits’ or
areas of an individual’s life, which have strong bearings on the person’s
mental health – even including developmental and genetic problems; which can’t
be changed.
Nedley
looks at ways to change the individual’s current focus on what has gone on in the past
and how the person processes present and future events in his/her life.
Example
scenario; your wife/husband/partner breaks up with you. The jilted person without
help may say, ‘this is the end. I can’t stand that this has happened. It’s
devastating’.
Nedley’s
idea of processing that event in a healing way, could be; ‘yes he/she broke up
with me and it’s very sad indeed but it’s not the end of the world and just
because my wife/husband/partner has left me, doesn’t mean I am unlovable.’
Nedley
stresses, this positive self-talk isn’t designed to minimise the event - which
can be very difficult emotionally and has practical ramifications as well - but
the healing self-talk gives the jilted person a way of being able to, ‘make
room’, for the loss and allows him/her to be able to live with the effects of
it.
Through
an 8-week course, people can go along to a weekly, two-hour workshop.
For
the first hour, they are shown a video, where Nedley talks about his
researched, ‘way out’ of depression and anxiety; including numerous statistics backing
up the emotional and physical effects of these illnesses; as well as the cost
to individual households of sufferers, cost to wider communities, to health
systems and more widely, to nations.
Attendees fill in a workbook during the
video address, which helps them to understand in more detail, the information
in the video.
In
the second hour, attendees are split off into groups; where facilitators
encourage them to look deeper in to aspects of the programme.
Module
by module, over the 8 weeks, attendees fill out questionnaires and make lists
of how aspects of the programme could be applied to their lives. Attendees are
also encouraged to share their experiences if they wish. However, there is no
pressure at all to do this.
At
the conclusion of the programme, attendees graduate with a presentation dinner,
put on by the facilitating organisation.
In
New Zealand, the programme is run in only four centres so far; Dargaville, Hamilton,
Blenheim and Christchurch and is facilitated by the Seventh Day Adventist
Church and there is a strong encouragement for attendees to have an anchoring
belief system working in their lives.
It
appears even usual health-based mental health programmes, also encourage people
to have some kind of strong personal belief system, such as mindfulness, yoga,
meditation – the list goes on (whatever is right for the individual).
Mental
health problems can bring with them, complete life-altering situations. And
having an anchor for the inner self, seems to give people something to hang on
to, to steady themselves, while trying to survive the turbulence mental illness
brings with it.
There
is a cost to the Nedley programme, but it is well worth it! Check it out.
For
more information about the Nedley Depression & Anxiety Recovery Program
Contact
Lisa Liggett on 0211179667, phone or text.
