COURTESY DANCE IN THE RAIN
Among the services at the nonprofit Dance in the Rain Whole Person Approach Peer to Peer Services are art workshops that are offered twice a month.
HYANNIS – After being diagnosed with mental illness, Mary Munsell said people around her tried to protect and insulate her. But she didn’t want that.
“I wanted people that could challenge me, that wouldn’t look at me as broken, as someone to be fixed. I wanted someone who would believe in me. And I couldn’t find that. Everyone wanted to wrap me in bubble wrap,” she said.
That’s why she founded Dance in the Rain Whole Person Approach, a nonprofit peer to peer support service for people with mental illness.
The center, founded in 2013 and located above Procuts at 145 Barnstable Road in Hyannis, is a place where anyone can drop in and find support groups, art classes and, perhaps more importantly, someone to talk to who lives with mental illness.
“The power of peer engagement is a foundation to healing, because when you walk through that door, you’re meeting with people who understand you, who don’t judge you, who walk your walk, who know the darkness,” she said.
Dance in the Rain is just one of a number of programs that offer peer and family support to address issues of mental illness and substance abuse on Cape Cod. The topic of peer and family support was presented as one of the successful models of treatment at the Third Annual Behavioral Health Summit that took place Friday at the Resort and Conference Center in Hyannis. The theme of the conference was “Building Bridges of Recovery.”
But Munsell, who sat on the summit’s panel on Peer and Family Support programs, said she doesn’t like to use the term recovery when it comes to mental illness. Recovery does not fit, she said, so she uses the term “healing.”
That healing, she said can be found through talking with others who have experienced mental illness.
“The best people to talk to are your peers, because they know the darkness. There is no judgement and that is the power of Dance in the Rain,” she said.
Dance in the Rain offers expressive and creative arts workshops twice monthly. In addition, support meetings are held weekly.
Dance in the Rain’s Underground Asylum Coffee House will be held November 19 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel on Route 28 in Hyannis.
By LAURA M. RECKFORD, CapeCod.com News Editor
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