Compass Recovery College

Draft Prospectus

January 2017 to July 2017

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Understanding health difficulties and ways of managing them

Understanding Recovery

A significant aspect of recovery involves understanding your mental health and learning to support yourself to be an expert in your own self-care. This course is designed to give you back hope, opportunity and control.

Understanding Mental Health Medication

Understanding Medication is facilitated by Mona Qassim, a pharmacist working for Berkshire Health Care Foundation Trust. Understanding medication is designed to help you understand how your medication works, the importance of taking it as prescribed, and how not taking it as prescribed can increase your problems.

If you want to ask specific questions about your own prescription it is probably a good idea to bring your medication with you, but it may well be included in the course content anyway.

Understanding Anxiety

Everyone feels anxious at some time in their lives. In this workshop we will look at:

How anxiety impact on our mental wellbeing The different causes of anxiety How we can manage the feelings

The workshop will provide you with a safe place to discuss your concerns, develop coping strategies, and find support, treatments and self-help groups, in your community.

Understanding depression

This workshop looks at essential information about depression:

How depression is diagnosed How depression affects different people Different tools for managing depressionThis provides a space to discuss experiences and learn from each other

Understanding Hearing Voices

Hearing Voices can be a very distressing experience, both for the person who hears voices and the people who care about them.This workshop is open to anyone who wants to understand more about hearing voices, it will include:

Different theories and ideas. Coping strategies people use. Sources of support, advice and

information. An introduction to the Hearing Voices

Network.

Understanding bipolar disorder

Someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder can experience a wide range of moods from excitement to deep depression. These moods can change very quickly. This workshop explores:

The common features of bipolar disorder What can trigger bipolar episodes Treatments and medication. How bipolar can be self-managed.

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WRAP

The Wellness Recovery Action Plan or WRAP is a self-designed prevention and wellness process that anyone can use to get well, stay well and make their life the way they want it. It was developed by people with lived experience of mental health issues to help them move on to fulfilling their dreams and goals. WRAP will help you:

Discover your own simple, safe wellness tools

Develop a list of things to do every day to stay as well as possible

Identify upsetting events, early warning signs that things are getting worse using Wellness Tools

Develop an action plan for responding to difficult times

Guide you through developing a Crisis Plan

Introduce you to Post Crisis Planning

Skills for Life

The Skills for Life course is a Recovery focused, ten week rolling programme which is based around the ten elements of the Recovery Star. The Skills for Life course looks at practical ways to increase your sense of well-being. It covers topics such as how to look more confident than you feel, building and maintaining social networks, money management, healthy eating and stress management.

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Making Sense of Voices

The traditional approach to working with voice hearers focuses upon inabilities and deficits rather than individuals ability to understand and cope with their voices and other experiences. This course is grounded on the acceptance of lived experiences of voice hearing. Participants will be taught to

employ the Maastricht Interview, an assessment tool developed by Dr Sandra Escher & Professor Marius Romme, which provides a structured method for understanding and working with a voice hearer’s experience.

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Creativity for Recovery

Recovery through Creativity

Engaging in creative activity can lighten your mood, help express blocked feelings, and enable you to access a state of ‘creative flow’ which calms the mind and gives you time out from difficult thoughts and feelings. Art therapy is a process by which individuals can explore aspects of themselves and their patterns of relating to others using art-making as the primary (or additional) way of communicating with their art therapist. Materials people use in art therapy include paints, felt pens, crayons, pencils, clay and collage materials. This course will involve fun, creative activities, working alone and in groups.

Shared Reading Group

This is a six week programme that is aimed at bringing people together for a common goal and emphasises the importance of meaningful social engagement and the potential ‘to tell a good story about oneself’ in a caring, supportive and non-judgmental environment.

Shared Reading has been proven to increase well-being of people at risk of isolation or mental health problems. Its other benefits include: improved connectedness; increased reading for pleasure; aroused intellectual curiosity; rediscovery of self; feeling more open to others’ experiences and ideas; increased attention, concentration and engagement.

Art and Craft Café

(work in progress)

Moving on Choir – Readipop( work in progress)

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Looking after your Health and Wellbeing

A Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep is more important than you might think. A single sleepless night can make us irritable and moody the following day, so it’s not surprising that chronic sleep debt may lead to long-term mood disorders like depression and anxiety. When people with anxiety or depression were surveyed to calculate their sleeping habits, it turned out that most of them slept for less than six hours a night. This is a two-session course that will look at the factors that can adversely affect our sleep. You might be surprised how many there are.

Thinking of giving up smoking?

This workshop will cover the benefits of quitting, health risks involved with smoking, theory behind nicotine addiction, exploring nicotine replacements and much more. So if you’re thinking about quitting, have recently quit, or know someone that wishes to, this is the workshop for you.

Healthy Walking information (work in progress)

Mindfulness

Some people may think about wellbeing in terms of what they have, but evidence shows that what we do and the way we think have the biggest impact on our wellbeing. Becoming more aware of the present moment means noticing the sights, smells, sounds and tastes that we experience, as well as the thoughts and feelings that occur from one moment to the next. Being more grounded and aware of our surroundings means we are

less likely to be overwhelmed by the distorted perspectives that mental health problems can sometimes bring.

Food for Mood

Diet and nutrition can affect mood and be both protective and preventative for positive mental health and can aid recovery.

The development of food skills can provide the tools to improve diet and nutrition and also impact on people’s self-esteem, confidence and overall mental wellbeing.

Food preparation and meals can be social events that promote a sense of belonging, family and community ties, and overall inclusion.

Explore the relationship between what you eat and how you feel:

How regularly do you eat?Do you get your 5 a day?Do you keep yourself hydrated?Are you eating the right fats?Are you getting enough protein?How’s your gut feeling?Are you having too much caffeine?

5 Ways to Wellbeing

A review of recent evidence suggests that building the following five actions into our day-to-day lives is significant for our well-being and recovery:

Be active: You don’t have to go to the gym, take a walk, and play a game of

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football. Find an activity you like and make it part of your life.

Take notice (mindfulness): Be aware of the world around you

Keep learning: Set a challenge you will enjoy achieving

Give: Do something nice for a friend or stranger.

Connect – connect with people around you, and spend time developing these relationships

This class will explore each of these actions, how we can, and why we should integrate them in our daily lives.

Mental Health First Aid

Mental Health First Aid is an educational course which teaches people how to identify, understand and help a person who may be

Developing a mental health issue. In the same way as we learn physical first aid, Mental Health First Aid teaches you how to recognise those crucial warning signs of mental ill health

Coping with Festivals and Celebrations

Birthdays, Christmas, Diwali, Ramadan, Shabbat and other religious festivals, holidays and anniversaries can be difficult. They can bring up all sorts of difficult emotions and feelings.

This workshop is designed to take the stress out of them and give you helpful tips and ideas on how to deal with them.

Physical Health(work in progress)

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Preparing to take your next steps

Action Planning and Problem Solving

Action Planning will help you focus your ideas and decide what steps you need to take to achieve your goals. This workshop will help you develop SMART goals, which could help you make decisions that will help you on your recovery journey.

This is a 2 session workshop.

Money Matters

A workshop to help you understand how to manage your money in an informal and supportive environment. We will discuss:

Personal finances Benefit systems Dealing with debt Lowering fuel costs Preparing a budget plan Where to get information and supportThis is a 3 session workshop

Planning Life beyond Services

Being discharged from services is a positive step forward, but can feel challenging and unsettling. This course aims to help you develop the skills and knowledge to manage the transition as smoothly as possible.

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Employment and Work Related

Thinking of returning to work, or getting your first job

This course will be delivered by Khadija Hussain, Individual Placement & Support Worker at Reading Community Mental Health Team.

Engaging in meaningful activity helps recovery. Being employed is a form of meaningful activity, which contributes towards recovery. Thinking of returning to work, or getting your first job? This course will help you:

Reflect on why appropriate work is good for mental health.

What it’s like to look for or return to work – a talk given by someone with lived experience of returning to work following a period of ill health

Explore your aspirations about work. Gain an overview of work and benefits

and where to obtain more detailed advice.

Know who to speak to about help getting back to work.

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Using Apps and internet for wellbeing or taking control

The use of computers, phones and Apps for Recovery

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