GROW is a uniquely structured community mental health movement. It began in Sydney, Australia, with its first meeting in April, 1957 and came to Ireland in 1969.

This is a very historic year for GROW internationally, as it celebrates fifty golden years. The movement was first named Recovery, to reflect the positive goal of its 12-step programme. It was subsequently renamed GROW, to better reflect the broader membership and aims beyond rehabilitation and prevention, to include a program of Growth to Maturity.

This year has seen many accolades for Con Keogh, its founding member. Through his writings, Con has provided GROW’s spiritual and intellectual foundations and enabled GROW to become a vital international healing movement.

Shortly after Con returned to Australia, an ordained priest after his studies in Italy, he suffered a mental breakdown. He says: “To be brief, coming out of hospital– shattered, unable to remember, and still very disturbed, stunned and mortally afraid– I was helped back to normal living by going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

There, he met other mental sufferers, and they decided to set up a group of their own, to help themselves and each other. From AA, they borrowed the 12 steps which they adapted to create the GROW program, “A philosophy of living that is based on the tremendous value of the human person.”

Con’s writings are at once hopeful and ordinary, but also brilliant and complex. They are liberating, they always endorse the person, and they are inspiring. They appreciate that we are free and autonomous, and capable of self-understanding, self-regulation and self-sharing.

The Blue Book used today is a compilation of fifty years of GROW wisdom. The book contains an amazing depth and breadth of understanding of human nature. It is a book of incredible insight and values, to allow people to develop and understand those values.

GROW’s Mission Statement says that: ‘It is the mentally and emotionally disturbed person who will always be its most cherished member’, whose greatest need is to keep in friendly touch with other minds.

It attempts to tackle the problem at its root cause, which is the self-isolating characteristic of mental illness. The dangers of isolation can be terrible: sliding into self-neglect and self-pity, or even worse, becoming prey to delusions, paranoia and obsessions, not to mention loneliness.
Those with a recent diagnosis are most at risk of suicide. Then there is the social stigma that hangs over anyone who has been in a mental hospital or is known to have had a mental breakdown. The sufferer is commonly tormented by a painful sense of shame and distress over his condition.

The worst part of the stigma is that the person takes it and applies it to themselves. GROW overcomes the sick person’s two main obstacles to recovery: his own inward isolation, and the stigma. From his very first meeting he realizes that his case is neither unique nor hopeless and soon learns he can help himself.

It is a setting in which people can feel safe, and learn how to communicate, as there has been no opportunity to talk to a doctor about what is going on in your head, for there are far too many patients and too few doctors. GROW is the missing link in the mental health services.

In human relationships, friendship is the special key to mental health. The group offers friendship from those who know the turmoil and the way out of it. The common goal of Growth to Maturity animates the meetings. GROW deals with facts, not feelings, and the measure of maturity is a person wholly attuned to reality (the vigour and peace of someone at one with themselves).

A meeting has structure and has rules. GROW is anonymous, in the sense that members are introduced to one another by their first names only. Moreover, problems shared are treated as strictly confidential and are not discussed with others outside the group. No introductions are necessary, and GROW does not charge any fees or dues.

Members who are still under treatment are urged to obey carefully their doctor’s instructions. And although profoundly spiritual, what’s important in GROW is that the vital difference is not between religious believers and unbelievers, but between those who care and those who don’t care. Members are encouraged to live up to their faith if they have one. The goal is striving for ordinariness and getting better.

The GROW Programme requires patience and perseverance (time and pressure). The important things take place at individual and group level, although GROW has big aims: To co-operate for the community goals of mental health, social harmony and spiritual integrity.

The World Health Organisation singled GROW out as having the same spreading potential as AA, and also having the potential to effect social change as well as personal changes. It is good for Con to know that people who benefit from GROW carry the philosophy into the rest of their lives. After all, what may we hope for? Enduring friendships, an end to hostility, and the best in life and love and happiness.

www.grow.ie or under Grow (charities) in the phonebook for further information.