Family-to-Family

"These 12 weeks have touched a deep place in my soul. I feel empowered with confidence in my own ability to cope, and in my ability to trust life. I believe I can trust the NAMI process. I believe I no longer have to be paralyzed by fear. I am so very grateful." From Family-to-Family participant evaluation, Asheville, N.C., June 2000.

"It was remarkably helpful," said Nell Andrews, who attended the Orange County Family-to-Family course last year. "Mental illness hits so many families, and it’s very hard to any family to deal with on its own. The course puts all this information together, information about the various disorders, and about resources that are available." The Chapel Hill News, January 19, 2000.

This core NAMI program – developed by nationally recognized expert Joyce Burland, Ph.D., and offered in many states around the country -- has made extraordinary differences in the lives of North Carolina families confronted with serious mental illness. It includes both

• education – classes designed to help family members understand the neurobiological bases of the illnesses they are facing, new treatment options under development, empathy for the person who has the illness, communication skills, ways of helping the person cope, problem-solving techniques and limit-setting techniques; and
• support – ongoing family-to-family sessions where parents, spouses, siblings and other family members find emotional resources from others in comparable situations, led by group facilitators trained in problem-solving techniques and in how to involve the group in cooperative sharing.

In the education component, participants take 12 classes of 2½ hours each, once a week over a 12-week period. The classes are taught entirely by two-person teams of volunteers, who themselves are individuals who have dealt with a family member who has or had a serious mental illness. The power of the classes derives both from the curriculum and from the credibility of the volunteer family members who are teaching them.

These volunteer teachers are trained by teams of teacher-trainers in weekend-long training sessions, and they commit to offering the Family-to-Family course at least twice in their home communities. The teams of teacher-trainers have themselves been trained by Dr. Burland at various sites around the country: the most recently certified team was trained in St. Louis, MO, in April of 2000.

As of August 2001, NAMI North Carolina has three teams of teacher-trainers and nearly 200 Family-to-Family teachers. The course has been presented in 26 communities across the state. There are also certified support group facilitators, who have been specially trained to help groups of family members lend one another emotional support on an ongoing basis. Over 1,500 family members have received the 12-week educational course, which had been offered over 100 times by the Spring of 2001.

The budget for Family-to-Family for 2001-02 is $79,600. The funding sustains one staff position and related overhead, subsidizes training materials, and pays for the training received by family members who agree to become educators or support group facilitators in their communities. For a twelve-week course offered to twenty participants, materials cost about $500. At our current level of support, we have been able to offer about 20 Family-to-Family courses a year. Support for the staff position and some related expenses has been covered by a grant from the Sisters of Mercy Foundation of North Carolina.

Much more is needed, and you can help! Additional support staff in regional offices around the state could help the volunteer teachers (and the volunteer teacher-trainers) offer the course more frequently and in many more locations. Many more of the estimated 150,000 North Carolina families struggling with serious and persistent mental illness of a loved one should have access to this very valuable resource.

In its Expert Consensus Guideline Series on the treatment of schizophrenia, the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reported that family education programs such as Family-to-Family reduce relapses by 50%, increase patient stabilization, and decrease the total number of psychiatric hospitalizations. Volume 57 (1996)

"When my mother decided to enroll in the Family-to-Family Program, I had managed to achieve 2 years of psychiatric stability. About 4 weeks into the Family-to-Family program (due to medically supervised reduction in my medication) I suffered a decompensation that landed me once again in the hospital. I shall never forget my mother’s demeanor when she came to visit me. There was a clarity and strength in her presence I had never experienced before. There was a calmness in the face of this crisis that I found strengthening. And she was very clear in her understanding that we had a common enemy in the disease itself. How liberating it was to hear her words, ‘You are not to blame for this.’"