GROW - Its History

Grow began in April 1957 at Hurstville in Sydney as an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous by Father Con Keogh. Father Con returned from Europe in 1954 and suffered a breakdown after 11 years of study. In hospital he was deluded, hallucinating and violent. He was repeatedly given shock treatment. Coming out of hospital he was helped back to normal living by attending AA Meetings. It was at these AA Meetings he met other sufferers from mental illness who were not alcoholics.

From meeting with these other non alchoholics who were suffering mental illness they recognized they needed to more systematically work on their own special problems of recovery. A few of their closest friends from AA offered to help. They decided from the very beginning that they would call themselves Recovery. In this way they would be focusing on the goal and the solution and not the problem.

In the words of Fr Con “we decided we would use to the utmost our own personal resources to help ourselves and one another and that we would try to identify and record and keep the things we found successful”. Out of that first group have come hundreds of groups that now cover every State and Territory in Australia. We have also spread internationally. By staying faithful to that initial resolve to preserve what we learned we have developed the Program of Personal Growth, the Group Method, and the Caring and Sharing Community”. This makes Grow the largest voluntary organization in mental health in Australia. Read More....