Changing the mental health system from the inside out with Miranda Arieh and the HEROES Programme

Welcome to episode 220 with Miranda Arieh, who is a mental health educator and founder of the pioneering HEROES Programme, a holistic, transformation-focused and trauma-informed approach to mental health recovery.

Miranda was sectioned under the mental health act at the age of 14 and became a ‘revolving door service user’ in the NHS mental health system, bouncing in and out of foster care, homelessness and crisis.

This cycle continued until a breakdown at the age of 30 forced her in to an intense period of learning, development, healing and growth and it was her experiences of the mental health system and her own journey outside of it that led to the creation of HEROES.

This educational and therapeutic mental health solution has been piloted within the NHS and Miranda has supported the recovery journeys of thousands of patients across Leeds and trained more than 800 NHS and private healthcare staff.

In this episode I chat to Miranda about her experiences with mental health and how these experiences inspired her groundbreaking approach to recovery.

We chat about the role of lived experience, building capacity for difficult emotions, dis-identifying from your pain and how she is changing the mainstream mental health systems from the inside out.

And we chat about identity, self-compassion, forgiveness, embodying change and the importance of tools, resources and actionable steps when it comes to recovery.

This is powerful stuff!  It’s easy to criticize the mental health system but it’s much harder to offer up actual solutions or to make any sort of meaning change but that is exactly what Miranda is doing with HEROES and that is both exciting and inspiring.  It was wonderful to learn more about how it works, where it came from and the impact that it’s having.

You can learn more about this incredible project at https://mirandaarieh.co.uk/

Follow Miranda on social media @mirandaarieh and @heroesprogramme

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Thanks for listening!