The Therapeutic Power of Community: The Fountain House Clubhouse Model and Beyond- 3:30-4:15pm Therapeutic Community: The Clubhouse Model - Kevin Rice, MA, Nicole Patton, Jamarne McGill, Brandon Daniels
- 4:15-5pm A Schizophrenic Walks into a Bar: Interpreting the Institutional Unconscious through In Vivo Social Interventions - Jesse Newberg, LMSW, Chloe Murtagh, LMSW
Therapeutic Community: The Clubhouse Model - Kevin Rice, MA, Nicole Patton,
Jamarne McGill, Brandon DanielsThis panel will consist of clubhouse members living with serious mental illness (SMI) as well as clubhouse staff. This panel discusses the clubhouse model of psychosocial rehabilitation as a community-based response to the needs of those with SMI and its alignment with contemporary understandings of psychosis as socially embedded and shaped by disconnection and alienation. Drawing on over 75 years of practice and recent longitudinal findings, we describe how core elements of the clubhouse model (voluntary membership, shared governance, and the work-ordered day) function as social therapeutic mechanisms that restore connection, agency, and belonging. We present recent evidence demonstrating meaningful reductions in loneliness and improvements in quality of life and interpret these outcomes as indicators of changes in the social conditions that underlie recovery. The panel further explores how community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) and member-led advocacy initiatives have structured a model of community work, rehabilitation, and advocacy that is co-produced with people with lived experience. Finally, we situate the clubhouse model within broader systems of care, considering its role in addressing stigma, social determinants, and the structural conditions that contribute to marginalization in serious mental illness.
A Schizophrenic Walks into a Bar: Interpreting the Institutional Unconscious through In Vivo Social Interventions - Jesse Newberg, LMSW, Chloe Murtagh, LMSW
For the past five years we have facilitated a weekly “Happy Hour” for our clients with serious mental illness at a bar nearby the psychosocial clubhouse program where we work. All program participants and coworkers are invited to meet at the bar after work starting at 5pm and order one free drink (alcoholic or not). Though we only provide free drinks to our group – about 30-40 participants and a handful of coworkers show up each week – the bar is open to the public.We found that this space created potentials that did not seem to exist in the Clubhouse’s day program or its other recreational events. We noticed participants acting in new and surprising ways, including reaching out to others, taking social risks, mediating conflicts, revealing hidden parts of their personality, and, for some, just being out in public. Even more unexpected was the shift in attitudes towards our group; bar tenders and regulars that initially tolerated our group eventually came to appreciate us as “regulars” too.Borrowing from the lessons of Institutional Psychotherapy, we propose that the potency of this event is attributable to its position within a specific institutional context, the Clubhouse. In particular, this event acted as an interpretation of the unconscious questions that have continued to vex the institution’s members and staff. Through the careful consideration of institutional and social contexts, unspoken or repressed tensions can be unearthed. Our hope is to give practitioners a direction in creating therapeutic spaces in vivo that respond to and interpret these unconscious questions in order to disalienate our clients, cure our institutions and fasten the social link.
