Mental Health & Disability Awareness
I set up Stop Paddling to use my skills as a facilitator and past experience of mental distress to help others with recovery and staying well. Many pages on this site have information on bipolar recovery. - Roger Smith
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1. NewsletterSailing Ideas is a well established eZine with new ideas on mind, mood and good mental health. Find out more or simply sign up here. Sailing Ideas is delivered by email approximately every 14 days. |
I experienced extreme mood swings leading to a diagnosis of manic depression (bipolar disorder).
On my own journey of recovery from this disorder I am sharing knowledge and
experience gained over 19 years of mood swings and now 9 years of relative
stability.
In 2006 bipolar recovery was very much part of the Stop Paddling business
with provision of one-to-one advice and workshops for charities. In 2008 bipolar
recovery is unfortunately not seen as a way of earn a living. It is, for me,
simply a way of sharing experiences, hence lower prices for bipolar recovery
workshops.
As a guide, if you would like me to talk or run a workshop at your self-help group a typical fee is just £50 + travel (such 30p/mile). See Examples of workshops , Bipolar Recovery Main Menu
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If you have a course, talk or workshop on mental health awareness, recovery, memetics, stress education, stress advice then please consider me. I am first class facilitator / co-facilitator and can help you make a good course extraordinary / something participants remember forever.
Stop Paddling can deliver Mental Health Awareness (MHA) training for you anywhere in the UK. We can use your slides and interactive exercises or ours. We can mix and match to deliver a course tailored for your group of participants.,
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Here is one way we have developed the
MHA theme > |
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I started writing short stories whist suffering from bipolar disorder and hypomania (mainly experienced as an inablity to sleep due to racing thoughts). Whist in recovery I was fortunate enough to meet others in recovery from bipolar disorder who were able to help with the publication of Stop Paddling/Start Sailing - A journey and some ideas.
I am now involved with several writing projects including a training manual for those needing to understand mood swings.
Also new issues of Sailing Ideas are always underway.
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The idea of meme as a name for any piece of information that can copied accurately and repeatedly has been around since 1976. Even so few people have as yet studied or lives and our thinking from the memes point of view (memetics).
I have been studying memetics since 1999 and went on to write Stop Paddling/Start Sailing largely to introduce memetics to a wider audience and to introduce, for the first time in book form, the idea that understanding a little about memes/memetics can help some people improve their mental health.
To experience a memetics workshop and have a chance to say, "Wow, so
that is how the world works!", Contact
Roger. I enjoy explaining about memes so you may be amazed at my reasonable
prices.
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I joined the Service User Survivor Trainers Network, SUSTN in 2006 and have been a member of the SUSTN core team since then.
SUSTN supports trainers who are using their experiences of mental distress. We support trainers by providing information, the SUSTN website, new contacts and a buddy scheme. The SUSTN web site gives members the option to have a page of their own to advertise their services or their business. Members may use the SUSTN logo in their literature. As the network grows SUSTN will offer more benefits. My page on SUSTN = www.sustn.net/roger
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I started using computers in 1976 (our ICL mainframe was as big as a house!) and learned to programme in BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL and Pascal. Throughout my 26 years in industry I was involved with setting up and developing computer systems.
With the publication of Stop Paddling/Start Sailing, I taught himself just enough HTML to created www.stoppaddling.co.uk. Then since the Stop Paddling business start-up I have been developing this www.stoppaddling.com site - as a brochure for potential clients get a feel for what I do in the field of bipolar recovery and freelance mental health training. www.stoppaddling.com also provides information on bipolar recovery (largely on the news and links pages).
In recent times I have been helping new businesses and existing small charities set up and improve web sites at exceptionally low cost.
Two of the sites I am currently developing are for South Lincolnshire Mind and the Service User Survivor Trainers Network, SUSTN www.sustn.net.
A site I have set up and would like help developing is at www.bipolarrecovery.org where I am working with associates to develop a forum dedicated to bipolar recovery. Does this interest you? Contact Roger
Are you starting a new project that needs a low cost web site? Contact Roger
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