Addiction and Mental Health Challenges Never Stop – How Nexus Recovery Center is coping through COVID-19
In November 2016 Jeanine Minter was greeted by a CPS worker in her driveway upon returning home from picking her children up from school. Alcohol had taken over her entire being to the point that she didn’t care if she ever woke up every time her head hit the pillow. CPS required that she seek treatment at Nexus Recovery Center as a stipulation to her case. She was about to lose her two children.
After being homeless and leaving her husband, Jeanine was referred into residential treatment at Nexus along with her two children. She was diagnosed with not only alcoholism but severe anxiety and depression. After receiving the care and counseling she so desperately needed, she was finally ready for independent housing that Nexus helped her find.
She stayed connected with the women she met at Nexus while she went back to school for a 2nd degree in Social Work. She graduated with honors in May of 2019 after completing her practicum at Nexus. Her children have remained in Nexus daycare for over three-and-a-half years.
Through a Crystal Charity Ball grant awarded to Nexus for Pediatric Occupational Therapy, while living on campus, her son was assessed and diagnosed with sensory processing and integration disorder. He continues to participate in treatment at Nexus two to three times a week.
In March 2020, Jeanine was hired at Nexus as an Outpatient Case Manager and is currently working on getting her LCDC. She is beginning her career and service work and considers Nexus her family and a true blessing to her and her children.
Nexus Recovery Center and COVID-19
Nexus Recovery Center’s facility, like other healthcare facilities on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, remain open. At no time in their almost 50-year history has their work been more needed than now. As people stay home to help slow the spread of COVID-19, many are seeing another crisis emerge right in their family’s safe haven. Substance abuse issues are soaring, with isolation, hypervigilance and financial hardships taking their toll on even the healthiest among us.
For people most susceptible to addiction, anxiety and depression, this might be the most challenging time of their lives. Families are seeing the power of addiction up close as their loved ones struggle to cope, sometimes putting themselves at a greater risk just to maintain a steady supply of substances.
Nexus has continued to be a force of healing and hope throughout the pandemic. Becca Crowell, CEO said, “We provide a safe place for women, adolescent girls, and their children who accompany their mothers, to recover from the traumas of addiction by meeting their housing needs while in residential treatment. This includes food, clothing, baby essentials and access to medical care. In addition, we provide hygiene supplies including masks, gloves, wipes, disinfecting sprays and thermometers to ensure the safety of our clients and staff.”
While mothers are in treatment, Nexus’ Child Development Center provides a safe and nurturing environment for their children, as well as early childhood education and specialty therapeutic services to address their experiences of trauma, abuse or neglect and intervention to break the cycle of addiction. Because of school closures, school-aged children are provided access to distance learning in our Child Development Center.
Founded in 1971, Nexus Recovery Center is a nonprofit organization helping women and adolescent girls achieve sobriety and sustain recovery from drug and alcohol addiction regardless of their ability to pay. Nexus Recovery Center is the only facility in North Texas that invites pregnant women at all stages of pregnancy as well as parenting women to bring up to three children (ages 0-12) into treatment.
“The community’s support will help ensure that Nexus’ programs can continue to operate during this pandemic,” Becca said. “Anything you can do to support our work will be very gratefully received during these uncertain times.” Just ask Jeanine.
Visit www.nexusrecoverycenter.org/donate to give today!
Here is the direct link to the 2019 Annual Report: https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/5352b93d/files/uploaded/Nexus%20Annual%20Report_2019_spreads%20FINAL.pdf.
And the direct link to the Spring 2020 Newsletter here
https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/5352b93d/files/uploaded/Spring%20newsletter%202020%20_xVCwGnq7TYO46kyvKHoB.pdf
(Sharon Adams, Adams Communications Public Relations, is honored to represent Nexus Recovery Center, A Night for Nexus, the Auxiliary and the Auxiliary Spring Luncheon.)
