ABOUT

About Arthropy

Arthropy, formerly known as Poetry for Personal Power (P3), a nationally recognized expert on trauma and resilience, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. Founded in 2009, Arthropy’s mission is to use art to show that emotional distress is temporary and transformative. Funded by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Arthropy was the first organization to receive two SAMHSA grants in one year (2016). As the largest recovery movement organization in the United States, Arthropy promotes trauma, mental health, and substance abuse recovery through three main programs:

• career development for sponsored artists/advocates,
• award-winning health care messaging,
• and a peer support program modeled after New York’s Peer Bridgers.

Over the years, Arthropy has expanded its network to Missouri, Colorado, and Illinois, working with various community groups to adapt to changes in mental health care delivery. Arthropy’s initiatives build resiliency, reduce behavioral health stigma, and increase community capacity to prevent mental health crises, helping treatment organizations deliver person-centered services with the consumer voice integral to their workforce.

Our Measurable project goals have been to:

• Emphasize and build consumer leadership within the organization (with an emphasis on business management) and in the community, as well as through partnerships and collaboration with allied stakeholders. In order to achieve this goal, sponsored poets learn business skills to organize events, identify potential community partnerships, train participants and partner agency staff, and collect data.
  

• Enhance knowledge, skills, and abilities within mental health services and/or peer support providers related to recovery and trauma-informed approaches. To achieve this goal, sponsored poets will organize recovery-oriented, trauma-informed poetry events in community organizations each year, which will engage and inform partner agency staff, poet-participants, and audience members each year. Plus, social media shares create a wide impact over time.

• Enhance consumer participation, voice, leadership, and empowerment in treatment organizations statewide. To achieve this goal, Arthropy places individuals with peer support training in community partner groups or treatment organizations.

This agency’s overall effort builds resiliency, reduces stigma, increases community capacity to prevent mental health crises and respond promptly when people need support, and helps treatment organizations deliver person-centered service through a workforce that has the built-in consumer voice.