• Resources – NAMI Family-to-Family course, brochures with information, a lending library in your practice, and mental illness educators.
An informed, supported family is in a much better position to be realistic and helpful. Families can be the eyes and ears to observe and report symptoms and side effects, for instance, if they know what to look for. They can help support their loved ones’ goals if they know what to realistically expect in treatment and recovery.
The foundation of recovery needs four cornerstones: medical treatment, structure, purpose, and community/love. Families, if supported and educated, can help strengthen each of those.
With these actions, we can find the thing we families have too often lost amid the confusion and loss – HOPE. We found it, though our hopes for Ben have certainly changed shape. But we are now grateful for the most ordinary things, and hopeful that the profession will treat schizophrenia, and those living with it (patients as well as those who love them), with the respect, research, and support no badly needed.
May is Mental Health Month, and we need to extend this awareness to families and caregivers who live with mental illness every day. We are among them – and with your awareness and partnership, we can dare to continue to hope – and help.
Ms. Kaye is an author, mental health advocate, and primary caregiver to her son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in his early 20s. She has worked with NAMI and Mental Health America, and is a paid consultant to Otsuka America Pharmaceutical and Lundbeck. The survey to which she refers was commissioned by Otsuka and Lundbeck, and was conducted online within the United States by Harris Poll in January 2014 among 302 adults who provide unpaid care for an adult with schizophrenia. Data were not weighted and are representative of those who completed the survey.
*Ben is the pseudonym Ms. Kaye uses for her son to respect his privacy.