By Bernie McCormick
We are incredibly grateful to Bernie McCormick for sharing his personal story and the profound impact that Out Doors Inc. has had on his recovery journey. Bernie, a long-time participant and former Board Director at MIND Australia, brings a wealth of experience and insight into the world of mental health and recovery.
From Crisis to Recovery: My Mental Health Journey
To give a complete background to this document I have to outline the context in terms of my mental health and the journey that I have travelled. I was admitted to Larundel Hospital in 1988 after a first episode of psychosis. I was discharged to a community mental health organisation in the Outer East of Melbourne. I had been successfully studying architecture for two years before the psychosis. There is a huge difference in expectations of life journey and capabilities after such a diagnosis.
Finding Out Doors: A Turning Point
My involvement with Out Doors came from an informal referral from a community mental health service. It came at a particularly significant time as 1991 was the date of my second psychosis. Up until that time services had assured me that most people only have one psychosis and this marked the start of what would be an episodic illness over the next 34 years.
To start you have to realise how debilitating a mental illness can be as it affects virtually all of your life and life expectancies for the future. Clinical services only addresses crises and try to alleviate these crises. The recovery journey really begins outside acute hospitalisation and is a very uncertain and often misunderstood process where often existing services are at a loss to explain these crises or even what helps people recover especially when this recovery is an uncharted area.
My initial involvement with Out Doors was when it was still almost a pilot study and very much a new approach to creating and sustaining mental health recovery. Out Doors was, and continues to be, a source of inspiration, connection, and one of the best recovery tools that I have ever employed.
To understand Out Doors completely, you have to realise what is lost in the experience of a psychosis in my case, but varied diagnoses have similar positive trajectories in mental health recovery. As people experiencing mental health challenges, recovery is our primary and ongoing work description.
Adventure as Growth: Skills, Fitness and Healthy Habits
The first Out Doors program was significantly different in intensity and duration to current programs. It was a three-month program with the same group of participants. In the context of an adventure program, we were involved heavily in the planning. We had a food budget, we went to the supermarket to buy provisions for the menu that we planned for the duration of the trips. We were learning applicable life skills that had a benefit way beyond the scope of the program. Even recently, when I am planning my shopping and diet, I imagine that I am going away for a week as a framework to how, when, and why I buy my groceries.
This was (and current programs are similar) and is about tangible goal setting in a way that has immediate results. This helps people plan and cook both inside and outside the trips. The confidence that is built through this process and the structure of the programs are essential, especially if you have been through the acute setting and may have lost critical life skills.
Goal setting is only one of the skills enhanced by attending programs. At Out Doors, some form of mental health diagnosis is a given, and therefore it becomes less of an issue to interactions. Stigma about mental health conditions is almost eradicated with the different focus on physical challenges. This is about learning what you can do, as opposed to what some services tell you that you can’t do. We all have mental health conditions, so one way of growing is to use the skills and physical environment that focuses on strengths and new conditions to develop or redevelop skills that we are still capable of using.
I often think that Out Doors is one of the few services where people actually want to be there. Even those sceptical are convinced after a five-day program. Out Doors helps between programs as well. There are friendships that are formed and having Out Doors as a safe respectful environment means that it is a safe space to learn or relearn social skills and deal with situations where it is ok to “make mistakes.”
When I was attending a gym, one of the exercises that I used was push-ups on the side of the warm pool. This was in preparation for learning to surf and was critical to my ability to try and stand up on a surfboard. Out Doors creates positive motivation to stay well so that you will be fit for the program when it is offered to you. Even knowing you are on a waiting list has been proven to improve a person’s mental health, especially when you can plan your life and recreation around the framework that Out Doors creates.
Changes to your life that include a healthy diet and meaningful activity enable you to challenge your own boundaries mentally and physically. It’s about personal growth that has a lasting impact on your life and perceptions of what a person, even with a mental illness, is capable of. In terms of diet, the program also allows me to try new healthy foods that may not have been previously explored or part of my existing diet.
I often intentionally try new foods on an Out Doors program and it has a positive significant difference on what and how I eat that has long-term benefits. Multi-day programs have the effect of increasing what I call your “emotional ballast” and stability. It gives you a deeper sense of your own capabilities. When there is a well-planned program with the input of the participants and the logistical areas are covered, a program enables people to grow in other ways because the basics of life have already been taken care of.
There is a facet of physical health that is prominent during an Out Doors program. After a day of physical activity, people are often tired. I call this ‘good tired” as it is completely different from a medication-induced lack of energy which often accompanies a life on multiple medications. Good tired is easily fixed with a good night’s sleep. Soporific medication states are often debilitating, especially after an acute hospitalisation. This is critical since an Out Doors program is focused on capability and not the regimen of the clinical model of mental health. Recovery is our job as participants and focusing on capability can show what medications can do and can sometimes lead to a reduction in the level and type of medications you need to achieve sustainable mental health.
Community, Connection and Support
Interactions with an Out Doors program can also create a ‘bank’ of positive personal experiences which can go a long way toward combating the memory of difficult interactions that occur with clinical services. People are often stranded after a period of hospitalisation because they have been in crisis mode, which is often at odds with their daily life and living situations. Another major benefit of the Outdoors program is that it can provide valuable respite for Carers, many of whom are rested and impressed with the improvement of their loved one after a multi-day program.
I don’t know what the staff selection processes are, but I have seen many staff over my time at Out Doors and it continually delights me because of the quality and personas of full-time and sessional staff. Staff come from various adventure backgrounds and have always been professional, respectful, enthusiastic, and supportive. This is good evidence of a great culture maintained over time by good management and consistent goals.
Giving Back and Looking Forward
I have been involved in the acute environment as an inpatient over half a dozen times in my life. Usually, the first place that I look toward is Out Doors to create and sustain my recovery. I have been able to give back to Out Doors in a few different ways. I was part of the mentor program and was involved initially in the creation of this newsletter. I also participated in the Mental Health First Aid training during lockdowns and I have since used this training to good effect on several occasions.
Out Doors is an oasis in the desert that is the mental health system.
About the author.
Bernie McCormick, Former Board Director at MIND Australia for over 10 years. Bernie has a varied academic background including architecture, environmental engineering and psychology. Bernie has experience in the mental health system as a consumer for the last 34 years. For the last 25 years he has been active in some form of consumer perspective driven role. He has worked as a consumer consultant in two Australian Mental Health services and as information officer at VMIAC, where he was also the VMIAC newsletter editor for just under 10 years. He has lectured at Universities and TAFE on consumer issues and perspectives and has been a recipient of many and varied Mental Health services. In the last decade he has also worked in various roles including the Assessment and Referral Court (ARC) List at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court writing educational insight documents for court staff. Bernie also works as a freelance consumer consultant in other areas of the system such as MHV and NWMH as required and where his experience is sought.
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