Katherine Ponte's Recovery Workbook nicely lays out the principles and practices that help people on their recovery experience. It is chock full of skills which workbook participants might try as they consider their priorities. Katherine comes at this from two perspectives: as a person with lived experience AND as a thought leader in the recovery space."
— Patrick Corrigan, PsyD
Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Director, Center for Health Equity, Education and Research
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AUTHOR

Katherine Ponte, BA, JD, MBA, CPRP, is a Serious Mental Illness Lived Experience Expert. She is also a mental health advocate, author, non-profit founder, entrepreneur, coach, consultant, and lawyer. She is a faculty member of the School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry's Program for Recovery and Community Health at Yale University, Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner, and New York Certified Peer Specialist-Provisional.

She built the ForLikeMinds platform of recovery-focused mental health initiatives that has a community of over 100,000 people and has reached millions. She is on the board of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-NYC and a member of Fountain House. Katherine has lived with severe bipolar I disorder with psychosis for over 20 years and has been happily living in recovery since 2018. She is based in New York City and the Catskills.

Katherine's mission is to share her hope and inspire others to believe that mental illness recovery is possible and to help them reach it. Since reaching recovery and starting to share her story publicly in 2018, Katherine's work has reached millions and been widely recognized for its insights and guidance by families and their loved ones, clinicians, and academics.
CONTENTS

Over 14 million people in the U.S. live with a serious mental illness, including bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, psychosis and schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Yet there are few resources for our community. This workbook seeks to help fill that gap. It is the most comprehensive mental health recovery workbook available, covering 54 topics based on the power of lived experience and evidence-based tools

People living with serious mental illness, families, and clinicians can find practical strategies and insights in this book to help reach and sustain recovery. It helps overcome the stigma that holds people impacted by serious mental illness back. The workbook can help all people living with serious mental illness and bring families closer together in the shared goal of recovery. This is the great hope of the author who has lovingly dedicated her life to this community.

Your
Recovery
Oath
Self-Assessment
1 Loving Yourself
2 Finding Hope
3 Measuring & Nurturing Hope
4 Recognizing Stigma
5 Recognizing Self-stigma
6 Valuing Social Roles
7 Nurturing Your Sense of Self
Life Plans
8 Knowing Your Meaning and Purpose in Life
9 Establishing Life Goals
10 Back to School
11 Finding Employment
12 Benefiting from Evidence-based Practices
13 Managing Financial Matters
14 Getting to Know Your Neighborhood
The Journey
15 Before Your Journey
16 All About Self
17 Starting Your Journey
18 Identifying Your Strenghts
19 Goal -Setting
20 Overcoming Challenges on Your Journey
Facing Challenges
21 Obstacle Talk
22 Uncertainty
23 Discouragement
24 Asking for Help
25 Sharing Your Story
26 Embrace Happiness
27 Positive Psychology
28 Gratitude
Managing Emotions
29 Triggers
30 Thoughts
31 Reality Testing
32 Feelings
33 Anger
34 Depression
Treatment
35 Mental Health Education
36 Therapy
37 Psychiatric Treatment
38 Medication
39 Health Comorbidities
40 Suicide Awareness
41 Crisis Planning
Self-Care
42 Monitor Yourself
43 Self-Care Essentials
44 Daily Activities
45 Commitment
46 Wellness
47 Complementary Health
Relationships
48 Helpful Caregivers
49 Good Communication
50 Friendships
51 Boundaries
52 Socialization
53 Peer Support
54 Emotional Support Animals
ENDORSEMENTS
With this workbook, Katherine has distilled many of the important lessons she has learned from and about living with a serious mental illness over the previous two decades. Combining her own life experiences with valuable techniques she has learned from others, she offers the reader a near exhaustive array of strategies for making the most of their daily life challenges, whether or not they have to do directly with mental illness or the stigma associated with it. Both persons living with mental illness and their loved ones and supporters can benefit from the practical and effective approach that Katherine brings to the work of everyday life. Limiting each topic to one page enables readers to go at their own pace and to pick and choose the topics or challenges most relevant for them at any given time without feeling overburdened or overwhelmed. All in all, this is a tour de force not only for persons living with a mental illness and their loved ones, but for anyone who feels in the need for some practical, down to earth guidance on how to make the most of life."
— Larry Davidson, PhD
Professor of Psychiatry, Program for Recovery and Community Health, School of Medicine, Yale University
As a parent of someone living with serious mental illness, I found Katherine Ponte's workbook invaluable. The number one goal for those who support loved ones with SMI needs to be to protect the relationship. This workbook provides a wealth of opportunities for improving family outcomes by enhancing communication, based on the lived experience of people in recovery. In my family it opened up discussions about the loneliness and isolation of living with these diseases. It leads to simple and concrete solutions to everyday problems. Using the workbook and talking about it can reduce the mystery and secretiveness that often exists in families. It results in meaningful conversations and a better understanding for all members of the family. The workbook helps develop empathy and compassion for the individual facing the harsh realities of life with serious mental illness. It also helps that individual understand how to identify and communicate more clearly about their symptoms and their needs. Being understood is a critical piece of the mental health puzzle that this workbook brings to light. I highly recommend it, both for people living with mental illness and for those who love them."
— John DeNatale
National Alliance on Mental Illness-NYC Board Member and Family-to-Family Program facilitator
Katherine Ponte's workbook offers patients who struggle with significant mental health conditions a road map to freedom. It guides them to discover the path toward greater quality of life and ways to rise above the limitations and sense of stigma otherwise imposed by the burden of serious mental illness. Her writing is refreshingly clear, direct and straightforward. Readers cannot help but feel a sense of empowerment and personal competency attainable from mastering the skills and strategies she describes. Clinicians will find this to be a useful adjunct in their work with patients striving toward mental health recovery. Caregivers will feel a sense of relief and clarity about how they can render better support to their loved ones while simultaneously maintaining their own self-care. Katherine brings unsurpassed credibility from the worlds of both personal lived experience and scholarly study of the recovery process. This work serves as an inspiration to anyone who has struggled with the challenges posed by serious mental illness."
— Joseph F. Goldberg, MD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Katherine Ponte has created the Mental Health Recovery Workbook based on personal experience with mental illness and a wonderful store of knowledge on the 8 steps to full life and recovery. The text of this book defines 8 steps to recovery from Self-Assessment through the journey to self-care and relationships. Her personal experience, her years of helping others, and her teaching the principles of success in the context of serious mental illness is remarkable. This book is a guide for personal success in the context of mental illness."
— Will Carpenter, MD
Professor of Psychiatry, Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Katherine's informed and informative workbook on mental health recovery is filled with practical wisdom and thought-provoking activities that can be used not only for personal reflection and action toward greater mental wellness, but also to educate and offer new approaches for supporters (including peer supporters). Throughout the workbook Katherine speaks plainly, as a caring and compassionate guide through the rough terrain of mental health challenges. A comprehensive list of topics encompasses the common ground most people with mental health challenges experience. Katherine has drawn upon her own lived (and living) experience exploring that terrain to offer a concise explanation about each topic. That topic is then followed by a simple, yet powerful activity designed to help the reader make a connection or create a personal path to greater wellness. Although the topics in the workbook follow a logical order, each topic is a short, self-contained lesson that can be taken in any order, according to one's interest. This can be especially helpful if a particular mental health challenge arises that is covered in the workbook. In that sense, the workbook is like a “help” system for learning about recovery and having activities to put recovery principles into practice. The workbook can also be used by a variety of providers, including peer support providers, to learn more about recovery and to share practical strategies with people receiving services. Ultimately, the workbook offers both the person who may be experiencing mental health challenges and those in a supportive role tremendous hope and encouragement that recovery is possible."
— Rita Cronise, MS, ALWF
Co-Director, Peer Support Services Technical Assistance Center (PeerTAC), Academy of Peer Services, Rutgers University 
Katherine is an extraordinary individual whose mental health recovery journey is an example to all who follow her path. Her persistence and dedication to self-acceptance, advocacy, and empowerment are at the core of all she does. Her work reaches those affected by mental health issues in a thoughtful and relatable manner. This workbook is a culmination of Katherine's journey to recovery. Her dedication, persistence, and eloquence in describing the steps to mental health recovery are to be celebrated!"
— Lisa DeFelice-Fratto, LMHC
Manager, Psychosocial Rehabilitation, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
There are no easy solutions for issues as complex and individualized as serious mental illness. By sharing her personal recovery journey and the lessons she's learned along the way, Katherine's workbook provides a roadmap for those impacted by mental illness to forge their own paths toward recovery. Leaning on her lived experience, Katherine has developed a rich set of practical resources that not only show others it is possible to recover from serious mental illness, but provides readers with the tools to play an active role in their own recovery process. There is something for every individual living with serious mental illness in Katherine's recovery workbook. The power of peer support shines through on every page, instilling a critical sense of hope for recovery in a way that only someone who has walked this road could do."
— Matt Kudish, LMSW, MPA
Chief Executive Officer, National Alliance on Mental Illness-NYC
Katherine has created an important and beautiful workbook to help guide people and families along their recovery journeys. Her love, devotion, care, and the wisdom of her lived experience shine through in this extraordinarily thoughtful and actionable guide. Mental health and suicide prevention advocates and organizations, such as The Jed Foundation, promote the concept of a culture of caring in which understanding, love and acceptance, mutual support, help-giving, and an absence of stigma are key features. Katherine, her workbook being an example, embodies what it means to foster and live a culture of caring. Enthusiastically, I endorse this workbook as an essential roadmap for people living with serious mental illness, families and loved ones, and for advocates and healthcare providers."
— John MacPhee, MPH
Chief Executive Officer, JED Foundation
Katherine has crafted an indispensable guide for navigating the complexities of mental illness. This wonderful workbook is an invaluable resource for individuals facing mental health challenges, their families and supporters, and the professionals working with them through their recovery journey. As a lifelong caregiver and long-time leader of the National Alliance on Mental Illness' New York City chapter, its largest, I wholeheartedly recommend Katherine's workbook. Katherine shares her hard-earned insights and wisdom while inspiring hope and providing concrete guidance to readers so that their own recovery journey can be made easier and quicker than her own. Amidst the turbulence and questions that so many families with mental illness face, this guide provides real answers to confront day-to-day challenges and work toward longer term recovery goals."
— Nathan Romano, MBA
President Emeritus of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-NYC, President, Atalaya Capital Management
Katherine Ponte's sincere, thoughtful mental health workbook is a meaningful guide for people living with mental illness. Informed and inspired by her own triumphant recovery, this workbook combines inspiration with practicality for those like us living with serious mental illness in a way which no other self-help book has. Her deliberate approach in constructing this transformative guide truly enlightens us to, and embraces, the parts outside of our illness. The wisdom of Katherine's mental health workbook unlocks the power of ourselves in our own paths of recovery and thriving."
— Arvind Sooknanan
Board Member & Community Advocate for Fountain House
As a psychiatric occupational therapist working with people with serious mental illness for over 35 years, I can attest that this workbook is an outstanding tool in helping patients on the path to mental health recovery. The workbook is a treasure trove of best practices. In a direct and supportive manner, the author provides evidence-based steps for the reader using a caring and warm approach. The easily accessible information helps individuals navigate the mental health system while bridging the gap to participation in the wider community. I think my patients would find this workbook to be extremely helpful, and I look forward to using it with my patients in the future."
— E. Chaya Weinstein, PhD, OTR/L
Mental Health Recovery Occupational Therapy
Thank you for supporting the serious mental illness community.
Your Mental Health Recovery Workbook:
A Workbook To Share Hope

Firsthand knowledge and experience about consumers unmet needs amid the evolving treatment landscape. Providing insights from lived experience expertise to enhance patient treatment outcomes. Understanding patient perspectives when forecasting the impact of new treatment options. Appreciating how patients define recovery for themselves. I look forward to hearing from you.