I first came across NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, five years ago. I was living in San Francisco, a long way from my mum, and we were both struggling, in different ways. She was severely depressed and I didn’t know how to come to terms with her condition. And I felt very much on my own with it; I wasn’t yet having that conversation with friends, and even some other family members.
I looked for support here and came across NAMI. Based in the US, NAMI is a nonprofit organization that runs research, education and advocacy programs aimed at raising awareness around mental illness and supporting those impacted by it. Their diverse initiatives include NAMIWalks and NAMIBikes, stigma-fighting and fundraising campaigns across the country, and In Our Own Voice, where people with mental illness share their stories with different communities.
But the program that I want to focus on here is Family-to-Family. This is a free 12 week course aimed at supporting the loved ones of someone with a mental illness. It covers everything from medication, diagnosis, self-care, and maintaining empathy and compassion, to working with the mental health community and how to deal with a crisis situation. Led by trained family members who themselves have personal experience, Family-to-Family is an open forum for discussion and sharing experiences.
I‘m not a natural joiner, and I’ve never been to a support group, but I needed something. On Saturday mornings I would bus it across the city to meet with family members in a similar position as me. Each week we’d review a different aspect of mental health, reading from the binder of information that NAMI provides. My surprise was how many of us showed up in that room week after week, who shared the same stories of loss and hope, and who wanted to simply educate themselves about mental illness.
Psychoeducation, giving real information on mental illness, is key for those who have a mental disorder, those of us who support them, and a society, which, so far, feels like it has misunderstood both. I don’t know of a similar program as Family-to-Family in the UK, but if you do let me know; I’d love to share it with my dad, who almost entirely looks after my mum. For now, he has a copy of the NAMI binder somewhere at home.