This past weekend, I participated in NAMI’s Family-to-Family training program to become a facilitator (presenter) for the course. My goal is to work with others to start a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) affiliate and one or more mental health support groups in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and offer the Family-to-Family course to people in the area who have a loved one living with a “persistent and serious mental illness” – bipolar disorder (manic depression), schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, panic and other anxiety disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Family-to-Family is a unique 12-week course (2.5 hours per class), taught by people who have loved ones who are living with one of the serious mental illnesses mentioned previously. The course is designed to lead family members through the three stages of emotional responses:

1. Dealing with catastrophic events: Characterized by crisis, chaos, shock, and denial.
2. Learning to cope: Characterized by anger, resentment, recognition, and grief.
3. Moving into advocacy: Characterized by understanding, acceptance, and advocacy/action.

The course involves two primary components: information and support. By supplying valuable information about mental illness, the course helps family members recognize that mental illness really is a physical illness that requires medical treatment. This may already be obvious to some, but when the primary symptoms of an illness are adverse behaviors, coming to terms with the fact that these behaviors are rooted in brain dysfunction and may be out of a person’s control can be very difficult. It was one of the most difficult challenges I had to overcome.

The course also provides valuable information about the most common medications prescribed to treat each illness and the possible negative side effects of each, so you can assist your loved one, when necessary, in teaming up with their prescriber to find effective medications that have the least undesirable side effect profile. (Any medication that’s effective has undesirable side effects, too.)

The support component is perhaps even more valuable. During the course, and during my training to become a presenter for the course, the presenters and my fellow class members provided information, insight, emotional support, and problem-solving suggestions. Knowing that others have had similar experiences with their loved ones, knowing that we’ve all made mistakes and that we must forgive ourselves and move on, and sharing our knowledge and insights tend to make mental illness feel more manageable. We’ve all come to realize that not only are our loved ones living with mental illness, so are we, and we can work together to improve conditions for everyone involved.

I came away this weekend having learned (or relearned) some very important lessons:

• Ignorance keeps us mired in the first stage of emotional response. It makes the chaos more chaotic, helps maintain our sense of denial, and freezes us in shock. It condemns us to keep repeating the same mistakes indefinitely. It reinforces the stigma of mental illness.
• Everyone needs to be somewhere. We all go through the three stages of emotional responses, and it’s okay if we feel shock, denial, anger, or resentment. Through education and support we can work through these emotions to get to a better place.
• You can’t know what you haven’t been told. This is almost a mantra in NAMI. After we learn more about mental illness, we often feel guilty for how we’ve treated our loved one, but we didn’t know at the time, so we really need to forgive ourselves.
• As loved ones, we need support, too. Mental illness delivers a serious blow to our world, our relationships, and our future plans. We need to come to terms with all of that and take care of ourselves. We can do more for our loved ones when we feel better.
• Teamwork is one of the most important tools to improve outcomes – we need to team up with our loved ones when possible, with doctors and therapists, and with the mental health community to get what we need and help others avoid some of the mistakes we’ve made. We also need to team up with politicians at all levels of government and with the media.
• We may have been powerless in stopping the onset of mental illness, but we have the power to do our part to improve the outcome.

If you haven’t taken the Family-to-Family course, I encourage you to do so. First, Find Your Local NAMI, and then visit its website to find out when the next course is being offered… or get contact information and call or e-mail to find out. If you’ve taken the course, please share your insights on whether you found it helpful or how it helped your family.

Photo by Mike Babcock, available under a Creative Commons attribution license.

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NAMI’s Family-to-Family Training | Bipolar Teen Blog (April 5, 2011)

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    Last reviewed: 6 Apr 2011