EDUCATION PROGRAM

The NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program runs for one evening for  12 successive weeks (6:30 to 9pm) in Sarnia in the spring and fall. It will also run outside Sarnia but within Lambton County dependent upon demand.

This program is a free 12-week (2.5 hours per week) course for family caregivers (spouses, parents, siblings, children, etc.) of individuals with mental illness. The classes are structured to help family members understand and support their ill relative while maintaining their own well being. The course is taught by trained family members. All instruction and course materials are free for class participants.

The Family-to-Family curriculum includes factual information on schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic depression), clinical depression, panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Brain biology and medications will be covered in some depth, but the main focus will be on the emotional aspects of family experience. The pressing realities of family burden and family need are as important as facts. The following topics will be covered: the emotional reactions of families to mental illness; the needs of families in critical periods of mental illness; developing empathy as the doorway to understanding our mentally ill relatives; learning new problem solving and communication skills to cope more effectively with mental illness; and assisting families in self care by encouraging them to speak their feelings of frustration, guilt and grief. These elements form the core of this program in family education.

The program was designed by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) a grass roots organization based in the U.S.A. During the past 15 years it has been given in hundreds of communities across the USA and in two Canadian provinces

For more information and / or to sign up for this program
contact: Linda Braichet  (519) 337-8110.

www.namiontario.ca


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