{"id":3336,"date":"2020-11-24T16:01:27","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T21:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/?p=3336"},"modified":"2020-11-24T16:02:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T21:02:43","slug":"vickie-carpenters-11-ms-personal-connection-to-mental-illness-spurs-action-and-advocacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/2020\/11\/vickie-carpenters-11-ms-personal-connection-to-mental-illness-spurs-action-and-advocacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Vickie Carpenter’s (\u201911 MS) Personal Connection to Mental Illness Spurs Action and Advocacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vicki Carpenter (\u201911 MS), an alumna of the Division of Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling, decided to pursue graduate school as a non-traditional student following her then-teenage son\u2019s diagnosis with schizoaffective disorder.<\/p>\n

\"Vickie<\/a>
Vickie Carpenter (’11 MS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cBeing involved in his care and seeing what his mental health care was like, I had the opinion that this wasn\u2019t a good system,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/p>\n

Carpenter said the person-centered, recovery-based nature of the master\u2019s degree program drew her to the division. The switch in career paths, Carpenter said, allowed her to have an inside look into the mental health care system in North Carolina.<\/p>\n

\u201cI decided that maybe I could do\u00a0something by getting on the inside,\u201d\u00a0Carpenter said.\u00a0\u201cAnd that\u2019s what made me decide to go back to school.”<\/p>\n

Carpenter, who has worked at the\u00a0Durham VA Health Care System for nearly 10 years, said faculty challenged her and supported her during her time as a student.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were there to catch you if you were down and there to push you if you needed a\u00a0push,\u201d\u00a0Carpenter said.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of her master\u2019s degree, Carpenter said a professional connection, facilitated by Eileen\u00a0Burker, PhD, CRC, and the division director, landed her a\u00a0research internship at the VA. Now, she supervises graduate students at the VA as they complete clinical rotations.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy strongest approach to teaching or\u00a0providing supervision is that\u00a0everybody\u2019s behavior is driven by something, and you have no idea what might be driving that behavior,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s very important to find out about\u00a0that person\u2019s story.”<\/p>\n

Carpenter has built a career on advocacy\u2014for her son, for continued research, and for person-centered clinical care. The first time her son was hospitalized, Carpenter saw a flyer for the Durham chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness<\/a> (NAMI) and reached out to the organization. After completing NAMI\u2019s family education class, she served on the board before becoming president of the Durham chapter. Following her involvement at the local level, she served as president of NAMI North Carolina for two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat [NAMI] class changed my life,\u201d Carpenter said. \u201cI had never heard the word mental illness before my son got sick. I was sitting in a room where other people were sharing experiences exactly like mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the VA, Carpenter recruits those with mental illness for various research projects, an initiative she said can be empowering for the participants.<\/p>\n

“We are learning from them; they can teach us. That\u2019s very powerful for a lot of veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carpenter said contributing to research can best guide clinicians on emerging treatments.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing can improve\u2014the treatments, the medications, any kind of programs around mental illness\u2014cannot improve unless research is done,\u201d Carpenter said.<\/p>\n

Carpenter said her family\u2019s story continues to motivate her in the clinic and when mentoring students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had never known anyone who had a mental illness, or, it wasn\u2019t talked about. [\u2026] It wasn\u2019t shared, or it wasn\u2019t diagnosed,\u201d Carpenter said. \u201cHaving someone believe in you [\u2026] is powerful. I\u2019ve seen it work over and over.”<\/p>\n

The Division of Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling is housed in the Department of Allied Health Sciences. In 2019, U.S. News & World Report ranked it as #9 in the country.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vicki Carpenter (\u201911 MS), an alumna of the Division of Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling, decided to pursue graduate school as a non-traditional student following her then-teenage son\u2019s diagnosis with schizoaffective disorder. \u201cBeing involved in his care and seeing what his mental health care was like, I had the opinion that this wasn\u2019t a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55977,"featured_media":3335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"layout":"","cellInformation":"","apiCallInformation":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","odd"],"acf":[],"featured_image":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/11\/VC_headshot.jpg","featured_image_medium":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/11\/VC_headshot-253x300.jpg","featured_image_medium_large":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/11\/VC_headshot-768x911.jpg","featured_image_large":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/11\/VC_headshot-863x1024.jpg","featured_image_thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2020\/11\/VC_headshot-150x150.jpg","featured_image_alt":"Vickie Carpenter ('11 MS)","category_details":[{"name":"News","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/category\/news\/"}],"tag_details":[],"_links_to":[],"_links_to_target":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55977"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/healthsciences\/crmh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}