Getting It, Together

richmond hill — On the rooftop balcony of the Krasman Centre, a small group crowds around a weather-beaten, umbrella-covered patio table. Cigarette butts and bits of winter waste are scattered about them on the ground. But the elegant old trees and quaint homes of the Toronto suburb are visible from up here, and, after a bitterly cold spring, the warm June breeze animates the group, particularly the women, who trade spirited complaints.

“When I told my shrink I was using alcohol, he gave me drugs. Since then, I’ve gained twenty-five pounds, and I don’t even know if they work,” Christiane says with a French-Canadian twang. The petite forty-five-year-old wears a windbreaker to conceal the Effexor bulge around her midriff. “I’d like to see someone else, but it will take months to get an appointment.”

“I’m an addictive personality. That’s why I’m staying away from drugs, and my shrink knows it,” quips Mary, who’s about ten years younger and sports an olive green hoodie and hip-hugger jeans. “For anxiety, I use different strategies, like taking baths. I don’t even care if the bath goes cold.”

The two women and a withdrawn, middle-aged man named John have gathered here for their weekly Pathways to Recovery meeting, facilitated by Krasman staff member and psychiatric survivor Matteo Castelli. The therapy program for people who identify as having a mental health or substance abuse issue was developed at the University of Kansas in 2002, but the notion of recovery can be traced back to Alcoholics Anonymous, a “fellowship of men and women” focused on sobriety that was founded in the 1930s. A decade later, recovery crossed over into the field of mental health when a group of former patients at the Rockland State (Mental) Hospital in New York banded together to form their own self-help community and, eventually, Manhattan’s Fountain House, the model for 400 such “Clubhouses” worldwide.

However, the modern recovery movement really grew out of the grassroots patients’ rights and advocacy groups that sprang up all over North America in the 1960s and ’70s, in response to the idea of incurable, biologically based mental illnesses psychiatry was saddling patients with. Inspired by anecdotal and empirical evidence (led by a 1979 World Health Organization study that found the rate of recovery from schizophrenia was at least 50 percent higher in developing countries, where there are almost no psychiatric services), self-described “consumer/survivors” stopped taking their medications and discovered that together, without psychiatry, they could not only function, but heal.

Today recovery is a fully realized and internationally recognized approach to attaining wellness. Just a week before this Pathways meeting, several hundred delegates attended a conference on the movement in Toronto, with presentations by thirty experts, mostly consumer/survivors, from all over North America, as well as India, Ireland, England, Germany, and Sweden. Still, it’s hard to pin down an exact definition of recovery. Tanya Shute, the executive director of Krasman and another survivor, describes it as “a person’s ability to self-actualize, with or despite one’s mental health experience.” Elaine Amsterdam of Toronto’s Gerstein Crisis Centres says, “It’s about living well,” adding, “The meaning of that is different for everyone and can include a range of different approaches.” But the whiteboard that hangs on the centre’s kitchen wall notes five key concepts in indelible black ink: hope, personal responsibility, education, self-advocacy, and support.

Out on the roof, the Pathways workbooks lie unopened as Christiane and Matteo discuss how well his first play, The Recovering, was received last Saturday night when it opened at a church up the street. Christiane, who was among an ensemble drawn entirely from Krasman visitors, admits she will miss the weekly rehearsals and especially the cast, a new community of friends. “Sometimes we went to a local bar afterwards for a beer.”

“That must’ve been fun,” Mary says encouragingly.



“Yeah. We went out last week, after our last rehearsal,” Christiane continues, her voice dropping suddenly. She fidgets nervously with the straps of her purse. “After a while, everyone wanted to go home, and I didn’t. I wanted another drink, so I stayed behind. I knew most of the people who hung out there. I remember we were talking about how the Penguins had won the game. Then I went to the washroom.”