Times Observer photo by Stacey Gross Kari Swanson, Director of “Corner Connections,” the Psychiatric Rehabilitation program at Beacon Light’s Warren Recovery Center.

Many people aren’t aware that Corner Connections, or the more technical term for the program — Psychiatric Rehabilitation — exists. But it does exist, at Beacon Light’s Warren Recovery Center. It has existed for 10 years, according to Kari Swanson, who has been the program director for the past four-and-a-half years.

Swanson, who has her Master’s in Clinical Psychology, has been a clinician for the past 23 years. Among the different roles she’s played are a prison psychologist in North Carolina, a clinician at Jones Memorial Health Center at WCA Hospital in Jamestown, N.Y., a clinician at Family Services of Warren County and at the Barber National Institute, and a mobile therapist at Beacon Light.

When the position of Psych Rehab — a program the agency prefers to call “Corner Connections” — came available, Swanson said she jumped at it.

“It was inspiring to me to know what the program could do,” said Swanson.

At the end of the day, no matter what hat she’s wearing, Swanson says she wants to be “helping people be better than they are today, better versions of themselves. It’s a passion,” said Swanson. “I just want to know that people are going to be okay.”

So what can the program do? And what does it do?

According to Swanson, the question should be, “What doesn’t it do?”

The program has few eligibility criteria, but the first is an Axis 1 mental health diagnosis. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by mental health clinicians — in it’s fifth version as of last year — breaks diagnoses down into five axes that attempt to paint an entire picture of a person and his or her circumstances. Axis 1, the top level of the DSM’s multiaxial diagnostic system, accounts for the most widely recognized acute symptoms for which treatment is needed: adjustment, anxiety, cognitive, dissociative, eating, impulse control, mood, psychotic, sexual, sleep, somatoform, and substance use disorders, as well as mental health disorders associated with a medical condition.

The second criteria is that a consumer be 18 years old or older.

The third is that the consumer is experiencing some level of functional impairment subsequent to their Axis 1 disorder in the domain(s) of social/interpersonal relationships, family, home, work, or school, among others.

Consumers need not be receiving services at Beacon Light. In fact, Swanson said, they need not necessarily be receiving services at all as long as they have a diagnosis. The demographic of consumers who’ve used and benefited from the Corner Connections program is not associated with a certain level of functionality, treatment, or particular need.

What it’s more about, said Swanson, is helping those with diagnoses find an outlet for social interaction and a purpose, some skill or craft to learn that motivates them to grow, and to show up.

And getting people to show up hasn’t been hard, Swanson said.

“It’s grown.”

Over the course of the 10 years since Beacon Light instituted the program, Swanson said there have been around 177 participants in total. But, right now, said Swanson, participation is the highest its ever been. There are about 30 consumers from around the region currently engaged with Corner Connections.

The program is broken up into four 12-week semesters, Swanson said, which accounts for 48 weeks out of each year. Each semester is consumer driven, with consumers deciding what they’d like to learn, or learn about, and how they want to go about doing that. Among the topics that have been covered over the years are things like cooking, keeping an apartment, budgeting, socialization, and then more personal skills like anger and stress management, mindfulness, trauma, journaling, and forgiveness.

The semesters run with the seasons, with the current fall semester ending on Friday, Dec. 23. There will be a 1 week break between semesters, during which Swanson will host an open house for the program. The open house, like the program, is open to anyone interested, regardless of whether or where they receive services. The open house is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 28 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., with lunch and an opportunity for prospective students to learn more about the program and what will be offered in the upcoming winter semester, which is set to run from Jan. 3 through March 24.

In the past, Swanson said, engagement and attendance at the program, which is not mandatory for any particular service or demographic, has been much lower. But Beacon Light, which started the program ten years ago, really wanted it to work. “It would have been really easy for them to say ‘this isn’t working, let’s just end it,'” said Swanson. “But Beacon Light wanted it to work. We’ve tried all sorts of things,” she said, to make the program what consumers want and need. From changing the name – Psych Rehab becoming Corner Connections – to the location, which is a private space of two rooms inside the Warren Recovery Center dedicated entirely to the program. “Everyone wants it to succeed,” said Swanson.

And Corner Connections has been doing just that, in Swanson’s opinion, by being both consumer driven and an opportunity to learn. “This is not mandatory,” said Swanson. But it’s an opportunity to learn. Every single time someone walks through that door, I know it’s because they genuinely want to be here,” she said. With consumers setting the topics and the methods for each semester, they’re more able and likely to engage with the program because they’re pursuing their own interests with help that lets them grow in that interest.

Once consumers decide a topic, Swanson said, she sits down to build the semester’s curriculum. Then she orders materials that consumers have the option to purchase for themselves, or she makes copies of each and shares materials that way. However it works from consumer to consumer, the very fact that they’ve got materials, that they leave each Corner Connections session with a goal and a plan for the coming week, “it gives them a sense of purpose,” said Swanson. “And a purpose is a reason to keep going. The more times (a consumer) comes, the more purpose they develop. They’re redefining themselves.” She said that the things the program does best, that she likes best about it, are that it helps consumers to see that they are not defined by their diagnosis. Corner Connections battles the isolation that can become part and parcel of rural communities, she said. The program even offers transportation to people living in outlying areas, toward the edges of the county, like Spring Creek, Sheffield, and Youngsville.

And through the program, Swanson said, consumers are learning how to naturally, comfortably have social interactions that to them seem scary or inaccessible.

She said that the program can also be tailored to individual needs, so that if a consumer would like to participate in Corner Connections but needs to do so on an individual level for whatever reason, Swanson can make that happen. “We develop a treatment plan for each consumer, what they want to work on,” said Swanson. So while the semester’s curriculum is group-created, it can be personally meaningful to everyone who participates.

Swanson also said that she thinks part of what’s making the program successful is that the stigmas associated with mental health are slowly fading away. That, she said, and participants are engaged and invested in the space — Corner Connections is the only program held in that space at the Recovery Center — in the program itself, since it is consumer driven, and in the friendships they develop there.

According to Swanson, anyone with interest can join the group at any point in each semester. There’s no need to wait for a 12 week session to end. “Sit in on a class,” she said. “See if it’s something you’re interested in.”

The coming semester will focus on journaling, trauma, regulation of emotion, interpersonal effectiveness skills, and forgiveness skills, which Swanson said was something the current program participants were extremely interested in developing. And as the program grows, Swanson said, she has no intention of ever capping enrollment. “If we outgrow the space we’re in,” she said, “we’ll find more.”

For more information about the Corner Connections program, or the open house on Dec. 28, contact Kari Swanson by calling the Beacon Light Warren Outpatient Center at (814) 723-1832.