Wellness in the Woods’ Virtual Peer Support Network offers daylong programmed Zoom meetings, giving people with mental health and addiction issues the ability to meet with others to promote wellness and discuss challenges they face.
A year ago, Jode Freyholtz-London knew that something big needed to happen if she wanted Wellness in the Woods (WITW), her Todd County-based nonprofit providing support and training for people with mental illness and addiction, to continue serving the community.
COVID-19 had hit Minnesota, and mental health providers around the state were scrambling to figure out how to safely stay in business. A central part of WITW is providing peer support — trained people with lived experience with addiction and mental illness. They provide in-person support and conversation with others facing similar issues. With stringent rules about social distancing going into effect statewide, Freyholtz-London, WITW’s executive director, knew that she and her staff were going to have to completely redesign the way they approached peer support. She also knew it had to happen fast.
“The only way to make this work was to take everything we were doing and move it online,” Freyholtz-London said. Peer support works because it is in-person and personalized, but, she figured, desperate times called for desperate measures.
Though she wasn’t sure how the agency’s clients — or her staff and funders, for that matter — would adjust to the change, Freyholtz-London decided the only way to keep WITW going was to take the bulk of its programming online.
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By Andy Steiner | MinnPost contributing writer