Recovery Narratives:
● A most common tool used in BS
Psychiatrist Nursing
○ Offered in the Fourth year
program where students are
taught
● It is a tool for building client/family-
centered collaborative care
● The student is partnered with an
individual participant who has a
severe and persistent mental health
challenge
● Over the course of 3 months, the
student is expected to meet the
participants weekly approximately 1
hour weekly
● Main Role: Listen to the individual
● Students are given a guideline which
they can question the participants
about
○ But mostly it’s more on
listening about the
participant’s life and story
and experience with mental
illness
● At the end of the Listening and
Asking questions, the student is
taking notes and at the end, the
students are able to produce a 20-25
page of recovery narratives-which
is the individual stories.
○ Students get to evaluates it
○ Depending on individual’s
consent their story can be
shared
Purpose:
● It helps our student to reduce their
own professional stigma
● Help student to build better empathy,
therefore they can better identify
with people as their human (they are
us and they are them)
● They become less likely to label and
start to see individuals like
themselves and they can work
collaboratively
For Psychiatric Nursing
● Essence and Their Goal:
Therapeutic Relationship and part of
the therapeutic relationship is to
listen (effectively)
○ Totally focusing on what the
person is saying
Common Question asked by the student
to their individuals:
● What has been your experience with
your mental illness??
● What are you looking for in the
future?
● What’s been your experience when
it impacted your life, family, and
significant others
Do your evaluation with your client
weekly
● I got this from you last week/you
were feeling bad last week did I
take/document it correctly??
● Have I understood you correctly?
● Is this what you meant?
The client:
● The client’s really like it
○ Because they think that it is a
form of therapy
○ They also felt that they allow
enhancing the student’s
education
○ And to better inform Mental
health
Creating New Narratives for those
Affected By Mental Illness | Alyssa
Cypher | TEDxPittsburghWomen
● Having a mental illness is like a
rehearsal, a skillful rehearsal, and
 performance (You have to put up a
face every day for a society that
does not really accept you)
● With mental illness, you really get
good in performing because you
have too
● You have to put up a face because
you have to be acceptable to people
around you
● You have to hide your symptomsand
that takes energy so much energy
○ you're spending all this
energy just so the people
around you don't have to feel
uncomfortable
○ so that you don't have to
worry about not being
accepted
it feels hollow and isolating and
burdensome
● you feel cut off from the world while
simultaneously being a part of it
I mean sure no one's forcing you to perform
but not doing so can be risky
● you could lose your job
● be alienated from your friends
● Loved ones face violence or
discrimination
frankly that's not a risk many people are
willing to take
● in fact many people hide all the way
up until they can't anymore
● once they've had a breakdown been
hospitalized or even completed
suicide
for me this is a deeply personal struggle
because I spent the majority of my life
trying to hide the fact that I have a
mental illness
● from an early age I learned the
benefits of performing in order to
appear in
○ I had more educational
opportunities
○ I made more friends
○ I didn't have to worry about
being discriminated against
● I thought the benefits outweighed
the cons
○ that cons what those cons
were that terrible feeling in
my stomach when I knew
that I was only being
accepted because I was
being someone I wasn't
● that heavy burden knowing that
○ I couldn't be honest with my
loved ones
○ the pressure got so intense
that it started to seep into
my life
○ making me feel isolated
depressed anxious
I didn't know what to do next but I wanted
to try something different so I went on my
Facebook and made a public post
I live with a mental illness
I lit it all out on the post and just posted it
and ran away from the computer because I
was afraid of what people would say
● but the response was
overwhelmingly positive
the thing that impacted me the most
● were the private messages
● people reaching out to me and
telling me that they felt similarly
○ but for a number of reasons
they couldn't be open about it
so I started thinking how can I take this
amazing positive experience that I just had
● bring it to those people who still
have to perform
● I started thinking about the good
and bad aspects of performance
 and it got me thinking about a couple
questions
instead of performing to appear normal can
we ask others to perform to appear crazy
● to understand the thoughts and
experiences that we learn not to talk
about
● to use performance to tell a story
about mental illness rather than to
hide from it
“No titile” alyssa cypher
I'm tired of sympathy
I'm tired pity
I'm tired of talking about the worst parts of
me
just to feel like people care
I'm tired of being an inspiration
I'm tired of being brave
I want to be ordinary and small and still see
you there next to me
:Baby Blues: A piece on Postpartum
depresiion as performed by Kali stull
Tears because I will be a worthless parent
How can I do this
Tears for my ruined body
and for my selfishness
for crying about my body when I have a
perfect child
Tears because this is hard and constant
and lonely
“The desolate Beach. My week with
Hypomania” as performed by Daniel
Fleegle
Why go on with this?
how much me is living right now
and how much am I spending each and
every day on cognitive maintenance
I feel like an old beat-up car that has been
sledgehammered at the sea-side carnicval
and eventually towed to the closest junkyard
But somehow I still press on
performances you just heard are part of a
series called anonymous open mic a
● project by my organization inside our
minds
● so here's how it works
anonymous storytellers can submit a poem
spoken word piece or short story about their
experience with mental illness then
● community volunteers can sign up
to perform the pieces live on
behalf of the anonymous storytellers
o without knowing their identity
anonymous storytellers can impact the
performance by providing context
performance guidelines and trigger
warnings
● the performers interpret the piece
and give it the respect it deserves
● every anonymous open-mike is free
and open to the public including the
anonymous storytellers who are
invited to sit in the audience and
watch their story come to life the
aim of anonymous open mic
● provide a platform for people to
share their story about mental illness
● to educate our community about
mental illness through storytelling
while we often focus the educational
aspects on people without lived
experience
it's important to build bridges among people
with mental illness as well because of the
huge diversity and diagnosis and lived
experience there can be a lot of infighting able to share your story for any number
polarization and even stigma within the of reasons whether it be stigma
mental illness community discrimination and we want

we can all benefit from learning about the

experiences of others to have a platform for these people that
really want to share this story and have
even those of us who think we already know that connection but maybe for a number of
it all as far as life with illness reasons can't do so anonymous sharing can
be the first step in the process or the
when you're performing these pieces you ultimate goal for some and Wow a world
can help build a bridge over that sense of without performance is our
isolation that comes with hiding
● so for an example at our first ultimate goal a future
Anonymous open mic a performer ● without stigma, discrimination and
gave a thought provoking an ableism
emotional performance of a poem
about bipolar disorder on the stage
● the anonymous storyteller who was
in the audience felt compelled to
approach him afterwards and tell
him how beautifully he performed
that person's story they had this
natural connection almost like a
shared experience except instead of
a
shared experience it was a blending of
lived experience and empathic
performance

empathy is feeling for that person

● what better way to feel with people
than to bring their story to life

I honestly can't think of a better one and

that's why I started Anonymous open mic
● you can perform someone's story
give it life
● maybe even learn something in the
process

because speaking publicly like I'm doing

now is a privilege that many people still do
not have there's no shame in not being