From the Chicago Tribune:

A home in the Chicago suburbs, Joanna’s Lodge in Winfield, offers an unconventional approach to empowering people with mental illness by giving them life skills and leadership opportunities to build independence.

Based on research done in the early 1960s by psychologist George Fairweather, Joanna’s Lodge is a “training campus” where four to eight residents with chronic mental illness live together for up to 6 months to receive intensive training in life skills, including conflict resolution and problem solving, in a small group. Upon graduation, residents are also supposed to have a job.

“It empowers them to feel much better about themselves,” said Susan Simonsen, executive director of New Beginnings Community Services, Inc., the organization running Joanna’s Lodge. “Now, they have a purpose. They have a lot of self-esteem. They feel like an active member of society, and they deserve that.”

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 8:59 am and is filed under housing, independent living, mental health, NOT2BEMISSED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.