Poetry for Personal Power interview – “How do you Get through difficulties?”
The Poetry for Personal Power rolling bicycle based health fair display booth talks with jay Matlack, the found of Tricycle Transit
Jake Wiens of Tricycle Transit talks about how art, and bicycling can help him through tough times in his life. This interview was done as part of the Poetry for Personal Power project, where a Rolling Bicycle Based Health Fair display booth went around Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District to see how people got through difficulties in their lives. The idea was, “What Gives You Personal Power?” This is based on Pat Deegan’s personal medicine concept.
Pat Deegan is a Ph.D. psychologist who was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 17 but then fully recovered and revolutionized the mental health field. When she was looking to find what was most helpful in people’s recovery, she found that people often did not talk about medications, but what they did, what gave them the motivation to keep working. This program is featured heavily in the work of one of our beneficiaries for 2010 and 2011, the Wyandot Center, which has a program called Common Ground, where people are guided by peer specialists to prioritize their medication needs before talking to their psychiatrist. People develop a power statement that indicates which parts of their lives they are not willing to sacrifice in order to make their treatment work for them.
Poetry for Personal Power was a program organized by Wellness Wordworks and Missouri’s Heartland Consumer Network and funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. This program was based on the work being done at the Wyandot Center, but is now taking place at Universities across Missouri and at the Crossroads arts district in Kansas City MO. In this video Poetry for Personal Power from the very first month of project, Jake Wiens tells why cycling and artwork are important to keep him connected to his community.
