Category / Resources

demonstrates person talking to help line
by karentwinem

New Help Line for Mental Health Caregivers

NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) has a free Family Caregiver HelpLine to support caregivers. It’s only available from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time Monday through Friday. But it’s a start.

To reach the HelpLine by phone, call 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) and press “4.” That will connect you to a family caregiver specialist. The specialists have lived experience as caregivers for loved ones with mental illness. They are trained to offer others support, guidance , tools and strategies for dealing with your issues.

Other ways to reach the specialists are:

  • Texting the word “family” to 62640
  • Emailing helpline@nami.org
  • Mailing a letter to NAMI HelpLine
    4301 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 300
    Arlington, VA 22203

Of course, if you have a crisis situation, call 988 immediately.

NAMI Books for Caregivers

NAMI’s “You Are Not Alone” book series now includes a volume for caregivers and parents who have children and teenagers dealing with mental illness.

Child psychiatrist and NAMI Associate Medical Director Dr. Christine Crawford wrote the book. “You Are Not Alone for Parents and Caregivers” discusses how mental health conditions manifest from preschool to high school.

The book is available at Amazon, Target and Barnes & Noble. More information about the book is here.

OnDemand NAMI Basics Class

My husband and I benefited from NAMI’s Family-to-Family classes. We also gained a lot from the support groups. This was particularly helpful in the early days of our child’s schizophrenia diagnosis. Now you can get the information without leaving your home.

The OnDemand NAMI Basics Class is for parents, caregivers, older siblings and other family members who support a child or teenager living with mental illness. This free, online program gives you information and tools for navigating the changes.

You can sign up for the NAMI Basics OnDemand class here. This is a self-paced class that you can access at any time.

If you don’t know what to do, you are likely to make things worse. You must have knowledge of available resources to get the best support for your loved one. NAMI’s resources are getting better all the time. Other books and websites that helped my family are found on the Resource page.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

photo of God on Mute cover
by karentwinem

Resource: “God on Mute: An Answer to Unanswered Prayer”

Pete Greig began writing “God on Mute: An Answer to Unanswered Prayer” as a paper manuscript he gave to friends. Today it is one of the most helpful books on the issue of unanswered prayer. One of the latest editions of the published book includes a 40-day Lenten study that I did last year.

I recommend it to anyone struggling to find peace when they feel God has not answered their prayers. This includes many of us who have a loved one dealing with severe and persistent mental illness.

I know, as one of my friends noted, there is no such thing as unanswered prayer. It’s either yes, no or wait. Still, as Justin Welby, 105th Archbishop of Canterbury writes in to introduction, Grieg comes from a Christian tradition “that expects the intervention of God.” When God does not visibly intervene, Christians in that tradition have predictable reactions. You can even see the difficulty when meditating on Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane.

Grieg is a man familiar with this grief. A British pastor, he cofounded the 24-7 prayer movement, now a worldwide ministry. His struggles with unanswered prayer focused on his wife’s affliction with a disease that gives her chronic convulsions. She still has the illness although she has outlived predictions for her life expectancy.

Citing many examples of unanswered prayer among his friends and other respected Christians, Grieg spends a good part of the book explaining why God cannot answer some of our prayers as we wish. The appendix reviews his 16 different reasons and how we can react to them.

The 40-day Lenten guide also walks gently through the book’s content as Grieg examines the problem of unanswered prayer within three contexts: God’s world, God’s will and God’s war against evil.

If you are struggling with anger, sorrow, bitterness or despair over your prayers, this book would be a wonderful addition to your Lenten routine. It has five stars on Amazon and four stars on GoodReads. So others agree with me: It’s a helpful read. Please let me know if you find it helpful.

older person's hand and young adults hand
by karentwinem

New Resources to Help Families

For Addiction, Eating Disorders and Mental Health Issues

SouthJerseyRecovery.com is a free web resource providing information about addiction, eating disorders, and mental health issues.

Studies have found that when someone with a depressive disorder abuses alcohol, both disorders are impacted and often become more severe. In the same vein, major depressive disorder is the most common co-occurring mental health condition among those with alcohol use disorder.

To spread awareness to the public, the organization recently published a guide covering depression and addiction where we expand on the connection between depression and drug addiction, treatment options, FAQs and more.  You can find it here: https://www.southjerseyrecovery.com/treatment-programs/dual-diagnosis/depression/

Suicide and drinking are linked, and it is important to be able to tell when someone who drinks may be at risk of killing themselves. You can find that information here:

Alcohol and Suicidal Thoughts

For Children’s Mental Health

We’re previously recommended Nationwide Children’s Health’s programs for families dealing with childhood mental illness, including the On Our Sleeves campaign. The pandemic has worsened the situation, with one in 5 children experiencing mental health issues in a year.

If you would like to learn more addressing the policies and problems that are making it difficult to help children with mental illness, visit the Collaboratory for Kids & Community Health website.

The collaboratory focuses on four main areas:

  • Improving neighborhoods.
  • Addressing inequities.
  • Creating population health strategies to address the national shortage of providers to care for children’s mental and behavioral health.
  • Developing value-based care programs for those with limited financial resources.

For Seniors and Their Caregivers

Caring for seniors, no matter how much we love them, comes with a lot of challenges, including higher levels of psychological stress. This becomes worse when the senior has mental health issues. We will be covering this issue soon on Loving Someone With Mental Illness.

Meantime, caring.com has a caregiver’s guide that covers burnout and stress, including how to identify and manage each. We also discuss respite care options and share a list of helpful resources for caregivers. 

You can see them here:

If you know of other helpful resources, feel welcome to let me know. Thanks!

person wearing eyemask that says delusions
by karentwinem

The Collected Schizophrenias

Esme Weijun Wang has published a remarkable collection of essays in “The Collected Schizophrenias” that present the experience of severe, persistent mental illness through the eyes of a high-functioning person/patient.

It’s harrowing to read if you have a loved one on the schizophrenia spectrum, no matter what their level of functioning. It gave me nightmares, but also insight. I’m glad I read it. I would caution against reading it at bedtime.

Ms. Wang has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and Lyme disease. She writes about her experiences with those illnesses as well as the societal issues that affect people with mental illness. And her writing is excellent, expressive and vivid.

Her ability to function is beyond extraordinary. It’s a gift from God for the rest of us. She is happily married to a man who understands her condition and is supportive. She has worked at Stanford University in the Department of Psychology as a lab manager. And the chapter “Yale Will Not Save You” covers her experiences as a student there.

She gives a view of what is actually happening to our loved ones that we would not ordinarily have. So I am grateful. But, again, I advise that this is a hard book to read when you have a loved one who is suffering from delusions and hallucinations. She makes the experience so vivid.