Diane Joe and Guy Beales, members of UUCR, along with two other facilitators, have started a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Family Support Group that will meet on the first and third Wednesday of each month, 7-8:30 p.m., in Loring 205.

The support group is free and confidential and is open to anyone (above 18 years) who has a family member (or in some cases, a close friend) with a mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia, major depression).

Each of the facilitators is a family member (that is, an individual who has a family member with a mental illness).  We are volunteers who receive a two-and-a-half-day training by NAMI staff.  Diane and Guy were trained in 2008 and have been facilitating support groups since then.  Our two co-facilitators were recently trained.

Each meeting begins with a welcome, introduction to facilitators, details of the support group, sponsorship, and housekeeping.

The introduction to the facilitators emphasizes that this is a support group, not a therapy group; that the facilitators are not professionals but are NAMI-trained volunteers who themselves have an ill relative; and that we are not here to tell people what to do but rather to share experiences and to support one another.

In this context, we avoid “oughts” and “shoulds”; instead we use “I statements,” telling what we did in a particular situation and whether it worked.  We emphasize that each person’s path is different and that what worked -or didn’t work – for one person is only one person’s experience.

We encourage newcomers to attend several meetings, recognizing that the group’s composition changes from meeting to meeting.