Employee Appreciation Celebration
Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided to Live With Her Voices.
Caroline Mazel-Carlton. Credit...Danna Singer for The New York Times By Daniel Bergner May 17, 2022 New York Times [...] Around that time, in the late 2000s, when Mazel-Carlton was in her mid-20s, a new position arose in mental health: peer-support specialist, someone with what’s known as lived experience who works alongside practitioners. The [...]
Baystate Health awards $1M to five community initiatives
Published: Apr. 14, 2022, 9:07 a.m. By Ray Kelly SPRINGFIELD — Baystate Health has awarded $1 million in Better Together Grants to five community initiatives with partner organizations as part of its Community Benefits Program. “Baystate Health is proud to invest our Determination of Need Community Health Initiative funding in the communities served by our four [...]
Trusting People as Experts of Themselves: Sera Davidow on the Wildflower Peer Support Line
An interview with Sera Davidow, Executive Director of Wildflower Alliance on their Peer Support Line and the founding principles of not tracing calls or contacting police without consent. Mad in America By Karin Jervert - March 30, 2022 Sera Davidow is a filmmaker, activist, advocate, author, and mother of two very busy kids. As a [...]
It’s Not Just Britney
The Cut By Sandy Allen | July 2, 2021 [...] The day after Britney’s statement to an L.A. court last week, one heard around the world, I called up a psychiatric-survivor activist I’ve gotten to know, Caroline Mazel-Carlton. Mazel-Carlton, who’s also a rabbi-in-training, works for an organization that is revolutionizing mental-health care in western Massachusetts (and [...]
Isolation and opioids during the pandemic
By Mattea Kramer Published September 27, 2020 2:17AM (UTC) This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch. ...Back in March, one of the first recommendations for reducing the transmission of the coronavirus was, of course, to stay home — but not everyone has a home, and when businesses, restaurants, libraries, and other public spaces locked their doors, [...]
Mutual Support in an Age of Social Distancing – How One Peer-Run Organization is Adapting to COVID-19
Connection, whether one-on-one or in groups, is at the heart of peer support. In a time when social distancing, shelter-in-place, and stay-at-home orders proliferate, the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community/Wildflower Alliance (WMRLC) is finding creative ways to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances dictated by the novel coronavirus... [CONTINUE READING]
How Talking About Suicide Can Give People Something to Live For
"To realize that somebody else has known that dark place is the only thing that made me feel less alone." O-Oprah Magazine - Dec 10, 2018 The only people who really understand what it feels like to want to end their lives are those who have been there. That's the basis of survivor [...]
Recovery Learning Community holding open house at new location today
Western Mass Recovery Learning Community on Chapman Street in Greenfield. December 20, 2017 By JOSHUA SOLOMON Recorder Staff Tuesday, June 19, 2018 GREENFIELD — The days of getting mixed up with its neighbors on Federal Street are now past them and instead the Recovery Learning Community at 20 Chapman St. is now finally [...]
Recovery Learning Center moves to new home on Chapman St.
Western Mass Recovery Learning Community on Chapman Street in Greenfield. Photo by Recorder Staff/Paul Franz By JOSHUA SOLOMON Recorder Staff Wednesday, December 20, 2017 GREENFIELD — The old space was embattled. The old space flooded. The old space had mold issues. The old space was too narrow. The old space was somewhat removed [...]