Last Friday, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Dr. Lee Hogan, a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Research Director for the North Wales Clinical Psychology Programme at Bangor University. He is also the Director of Helping Groups to Grow Development, and has published a large number of papers in the substance addiction field.
I wanted to interview Lee in relation to the book I’m writing about addiction recovery in North Wales, in large part because he developed, in collaboration with Kevin Fisher—then the CEO of Helping Groups to Grow—Moving On In My Recovery (MOIMR). This innovative programme is now having a great impact in North Wales and further afield. I’ve spoken to a number of people in North Wales who have talked very positively about this programme. I thought I’d take this opportunity of introducing you to MOIMR in this blog post, and write further about the programme in tomorrow’s post.
Moving On In My Recovery (MOIMR) is a 12-session, manual-guided programme designed to provide people wishing to recover from substance use problems with the skills needed to support their recovery. The programme also aims to bridge the gap between formal treatment and sustained recovery. It utilises the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in combination with service users’ lived experiences. ACT is an empirically-based psychological intervention that uses acceptance and mindfulness strategies along with commitment and behaviour-change strategies to increase psychological flexibility.
MOIMR is delivered in a group environment and is generally (but not always) facilitated, or co-facilitated, by someone in recovery who has been through the programme. It is a core part of the recovery programme delivered by North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) at Penryhn House in Bangor.
The MOIMR programme was developed by asking people in recovery what helped them most early in their recovery (e.g., what topics were most important to consider and what strategies and techniques were most helpful to them). The programme addresses many topics related to mental wellbeing and substance misuse (e.g., how to deal with loss, stigma, shame, anxiety, depression, and relapse). Each of the topics and strategies is based on psychological theory, and each is an evidence-based technique that has been shown to be effective in practice. [1] You can see the topics covered by MOIMR in the lower part of this linked to page.
The benefits of MOIMR have been wide-reaching, profoundly empowering people on their recovery journey. [2] Since its development, the programme has been credited with helping hundreds of people across the UK achieve sustained recovery from addiction. Lee and colleagues have also developed the Moving On App, a free resource that offers a real-time intervention on a hand-held device or on a computer.
Additional programmes, like Nudge and Pathways to Recovery, have also been developed by Lee and colleagues that offer support for the whole treatment journey, from those finding it difficult to engage and in entrenched and unhelpful patterns of behaviour to those in the early stages of recovery.
The following two high-quality research papers are well-worth reading in order to better understand the nature of MOIMR and how it impacts positively on people trying to recover from addiction.
[1] A pilot study of the Moving On In My Recovery program for people in recovery from substance use by Lee M. Hogan, Mansour Bagheri, W. Miles Cox, David B. Morgan and Hannah C. Rettie.
[2] A Qualitative Exploration of the Process and Experience of Change in Moving on in My Recovery: An Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Based Recovery Group for Substance Use Disorder by Emma L. Shepley, Mike C. Jackson and Lee M. Hogan
Please check out my follow-up blog post: