Spotlight: Mental Health Recovery: Wellness Resilience Story Circles

Join us for the third and final special "Spotlight" session hosted by the Global Alliance for Behavioral Health and Social Justice and the Coming Together for Action Conference. These bonus live sessions will be recorded and available as on-demand content during the conference. Access is free but you’ll need to register for your space in each spotlight session.

Poetry for Personal Power Wellness and Resilience Story Circles: Building Sustained Peer and Provider Wellness and Recovery Communities

The goals of the Wellness and Resilience Story Circles initiative are to promote collaboration and partnership with providers, agencies, researchers, peer advocates, and community stakeholders, to promote systemic change within the mental health and the broader healthcare community, to improve the recovery of persons who suffer with mental illness, and substance abuse challenges.

Register now at zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fcB-Va25Rr2WKthnSsg2Lw. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining this Zoom webinar.

Speaker Profiles

Deborah A. Wilcox, PhD, is the Founder & CEO of Confluency Consultants and Associates, an enterprise that provides comprehensive Organizational Development and Health and Wellness Coaching services. The primary mission of her consultancy is to integrate multicultural competency into organizational and community life that bring people together across cultural differences to build healthy and productive relationships. Dr. Wilcox was the recipient of the 2014 Multicultural Award of Distinction from the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association (PRA), which recognizes her outstanding contribution to the field of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and her leadership has continued to set the bar for the best practices in community mental health. Her applied research is within community mental health; focused on the development and implementation of Mental Health Wellness and Resilience Story Circles. She has served on the NYAPRS Cultural Competence Committee since 2016. Connect with Deborah on LinkedIn

Brian Bernard, a.k.a. Brian Be, (@BeArtsWellness) is an autism self-advocate, artist, performer, and writer. As a Poetry for Personal Power (P3) Project Manager, he is a proud co-developer of the P3 Wellness & Resiliency Story Circle and continues to work on program design, networking, and implementation. Brian is also the Self Advocacy Coordinator for JFK Partners at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and brings arts into community wellness programs with edutainment. He's served the community in many ways including 10 years on the Colorado Behavioral Health Planning and Advisory Council, 2 years as co-chair of JFK Partners Community Advisory Council, 8+ years with Integrated Dance, and 4+ years plus with Roshni, a dance group engaging immigrants and refugees along with other locals. Why does he go by Brian Be? Simple, Be yourself, quirks & all.

Andre Carbonell, B.K.A. Hakeem Furious, (@HakeemFurious) is an international performance artist/writer, facilitating artist, and community organizer. His work started in 2012, immediately after graduating from Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and becoming a member of Black on Black Rhyme, which is a community organization that contracts poets/writers for events and programming throughout the south. Andre spent the next 4 years attending Florida A&M University, performing at universities across the state, teaching workshops in the local schools, and organizing community events centered around education, innovation, and liberation. In 2016, he migrated to his birthplace, Denver, CO, to grow his business and learning in 2016. He soon after started his brand #TheUltraTerrestrialTour, working as an independent contractor to different grassroots organizations and nonprofits. Connect with Andre on LinkedIn

Bobby March, Jr., is a P3 Peer Advocate who is Epileptic. His platform is recovery from addiction. Bobby also lives with Depression and PTSD. He loves his service dog Aeriel and house doggie Kammy and hanging out with friends and family on the phone and through Zoom during these COVID-19 times.