Katherine Ponte, BA, JD, MBA, CPRP is a mental health recovery advocate, published author, non-profit founder, entrepreneur, coach and lawyer. She is a Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner and faculty member of the Department of Psychiatry's Program for Recovery and Community Health at Yale University. She built the ForLikeMinds platform of recovery-focused mental health initiatives and its associated community of over 100,000 that has reached millions. She is on the board of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-NYC. Katherine has lived with severe bipolar I disorder with psychosis for over 20 years and has been happily living in recovery since 2018. She is based in New York, USA.
“Katherine has distilled many of the important lessons she has learned from and about living with a serious mental illness over the previous two decades. Combining her own life experiences with valuable techniques, she offers the reader a near-exhaustive array of strategies for making the most of their daily life challenges, whether or not they have to do directly with mental illness or the stigma associated with it. Limiting each topic to one page enables readers to go at their own pace and to pick and choose the topics or challenges most relevant for them at any given time without feeling overburdened or overwhelmed. This is a tour de force not only for anyone living with a mental illness and their loved ones, but for those who feel in the need for some practical, down-to-earth guidance on how to make the most of life.” – Larry Davidson, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Program for Recovery and Community Health, School of Medicine, Yale University “Katherine Ponte’s recovery work lays out the principles and practices that help people in their recovery experience. It is full of skills which workbook participants might try as they consider their priorities. Katherine comes at this from two perspectives: as a person with lived experience AND as a thought leader in the recovery space.” – Patrick Corrigan, Psy.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology, Director, Center for Health Equity, Education and Research “Katherine Ponte’s workbook offers patients who struggle with significant mental health conditions a road map to freedom. It guides them to discover the path toward a greater quality of life and ways to rise above the limitations and sense of stigma otherwise imposed by the burden of serious mental illness. Her writing is refreshingly clear, direct and straightforward. Readers cannot help but feel a sense of empowerment and personal competency attainable from mastering the skills and strategies she describes. Clinicians will find this to be a useful adjunct in their work with patients striving toward mental health recovery. Caregivers will feel a sense of relief and clarity about how they can render better support to their loved ones while simultaneously maintaining their own self-care. Katherine brings unsurpassed credibility from the worlds of both personal lived experience and scholarly study of the recovery process.” – Joseph F. Goldberg, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai “As a psychiatric occupational therapist working with people with serious mental illness for over 35 years, I can attest that this workbook is an outstanding tool in helping patients on the path to mental health recovery. The workbook is a treasure trove of best practices. In a direct and supportive manner, Katherine provides evidence-based steps for the reader using a caring and warm approach. The easily accessible information helps individuals navigate the mental health system while bridging the gap to participation in the wider community. I look forward to using it with my patients in the future.” – E. Chaya Weinstein, Ph.D., OTR/L, Mental Health Recovery Occupational Therapy (OT)