Why Don’t They Just Take Their Meds?

For over 30 years Pat Deegan, PhD has been a thought leader and disruptive innovator in the field behavioral health recovery. Pat founded a company run by and for people in recovery. The mission: To safeguard human dignity by bringing individual voice and choice to the center of the clinical care team. Toward this end she developed Pat Deegan’s Recovery Approach that includes the award winning CommonGround software, Medication Empowerment, Certified Personal Medicine Coaching, the online Recovery Library, the CommonGround Academy for peers and practitioners, and the Hearing Distressing Voices Simulation. Since 2009 Pat has worked as a consultant helping to develop and evolve the OnTrackNY model for coordinated specialty care teams for young folks experiencing early psychosis. Pat is an activist in the disability rights movement and has lived her own journey of recovery after being diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager. She has held a number of academic appointments, has numerous publications, and has carried a message of hope for recovery to audiences around the world. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Duquesne University. Session title - "Why Don’t They Just Take Their Meds?" The Law & Mental Health Conference is the premiere online educational event dedicated to the intersection of law and mental illness. Since 2000 the Conference has brought together expert speakers, teachers, and practitioners with legal, clinical, and lived experience. The Conference is designed for attorneys, law enforcement, public and private clinicians, public healthcare and hospital administrators, social workers, policy designers and legislators, and organizations and individuals involved with the care and welfare of people with mental illness, addiction, and alcoholism – and most importantly, for those with lived experience of severe mental illness. The 2024 Law & Mental Health Conference on psychosis was held June 10, 11 2024, and is produced by Jason Renaud for the Mental Health Association of Portland