National Council Magazine - Winter 2009 - 49

lives. Topics include understanding one’s illness, managing stress and problems, recognizing and responding to relapse, and substance use. Team Solutions offers information in small, manageable sections, with an interactive format and a tone that is hopeful, encouraging, and empowering. SOLUTIONS FOR WELLNESS Solutions for Wellness is a set of two workbooks that incorporates physical health and wellness into the recovery process. The goal is to help change many of the lifestyle factors that contribute to the high morbidity and mortality rates in people with SMI. Taking a small steps approach, these workbooks encourage consumers to gradually make healthier choices to improve their personal health and wellness. and stress management skills. Therapists use them to help consumers learn and practice recovery lifestyle habits to optimize recovery and reduce their risk of relapse. Day programs enrich their services with a full curriculum approach to enable quick and easy data collection and outcome reporting. Prescribers select and hand out speciﬁc pages to augment the messages they typically want patients to take away from their brief sessions. Peer support specialists use the workbooks to facilitate educational support groups for a wide range of peers. The most common obstacle is making the process too hard. You don’t have to read or study the workbooks to use them. You don’t even need to create an elaborate implementation plan. Because there’s no ﬁdelity scale and the materials are modular, you can used them ﬂexibly. You can truly just jump right in and get started today to improve complete wellness and to measure consumer outcomes. Team Solutions and Solutions for Wellness materials can be downloaded at www.treatmentteam.com. The website includes Spanish-language versions of the materials. Team Solutions and Solutions for Wellness were developed by a group of renowned experts and supported by Eli Lilly and Company. Patricia Scheiﬂer is the Director of Partnership for Recovery, a consulting ﬁrm specializing in providing, developing, and enhancing services for people who are recovering from serious mental illness. Patricia has more than 20 years of direct practice and administrative experience across the treatment continuum and specializes in recovery-oriented treatment of persons with severe and persistent mental illness. She has presented over 300 workshops across the country and has co-authored numerous books. 3. Understanding Your Illness 4. Understanding Your Treatment 5. Getting the Best Results from Your Medicine 6. Managing Stress and Problems 7. Making Choices: Substances and You 8. Recognizing and Responding to Relapse 9. Managing Crisis 10. Recovery in Process: Putting It All Together Solutions for Wellness workbooks feature valuable information on choosing wellness — healthy eating and physical activity NEW EDITIONS, NEW FEATURES The new editions of Team Solutions and Solutions for Wellness include enhanced materials for consumers and improved ease of use for facilitators: Team Solutions and Solutions for Wellness are used by mental health professionals and paraprofessionals in individual and group sessions. They have been disseminated and implemented in a variety of settings, including outpatient, inpatient, CSU, day treatment, clubhouse, case management, Assertive Community Treatment, and residential treatment settings. All the materials include brief facilitator’s notes for quick session preparation and describe simple, measurable outcomes that can help you document the success of your sessions and promote your work. Although a number of psychoeducational materials are available, only Team Solutions and Solutions for Wellness pull together the best available research and present it in such an easy-to-use format. No intensive training or advanced clinical skills are required to use the workbooks. GETTING STARTED These materials have been used for more than 11 years by all members of the treatment team. Nurses use them as handouts to supplement verbal instructions routinely provided during injections, lab work, and medication monitoring. Case managers and ACT teams use the workbooks to help consumers learn and practice effective problem solving, relapse reduction, >> The materials are divided into shorter sections, so each section can be completed in a 1-hour session. >> There is a greater emphasis on stages of change, motivation, and engagement strategies. >> Personal practice options and small healthy steps are included to promote review, utilization, exploration, sharing, and discussion of knowledge and skills between sessions. >> Relatively uniform measurable objectives are provided for each session to make inclusion in treatment plans and progress notes quick and easy. >> A pre- and post topic assessment provides several easy-to-use outcome measures for each session, and the results can be quickly documented in progress notes. >> Information has been updated to reﬂect current guidelines and evidence-based interventions. >> The materials do not focus on a single diagnosis or disorder. >> A new workbook speciﬁcally addresses substance use issues in a psychoeducational workbook format. >> Additional skill-building strategies are included. >> Each session’s Facilitator’s Guide and Pre/Post Topic Assessment precede the session’s participant handout, rather than being segregated into separate binders. WORKBOOKS Team Solutions workbooks feature comprehensive, easy-to-follow guidelines to help people recovering from mental illness: 1. Recovering: Achieving Your Life Goals 2. Partnering with Your Treatment Team Team Solutions and Solutions for Wellness are resources to help the behavioral health treatment team empower and inspire patients with psychiatric illnesses to choose a healthier lifestyle, manage their psychiatric disorder, and make choices that reduce relapse and facilitate recovery. NATIONAL COUNCIL MAGAZINE • WINTER 2009/ 45

National Council Magazine - Winter 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of National Council Magazine - Winter 2009