CLASS 1:
Introduction: Special features of the course; learning about the normative stages of our emotional reactions to the trauma of mental illness; our belief system and principles; your goals for your family member with mental illness; understanding illness symptoms as a “double-edged sword.”
CLASS 2:
Schizophrenia, Major Depression, Mania, Schizo-affective Disorder: Diagnostic criteria; characteristic features of psychotic illnesses; questions and answers about getting through the critical periods in mental illness; keeping a Crisis File.
CLASS 3:
Mood Disorders and Anxiety Disorders: Types and sub-types of depression and bipolar disorder; causes of mood disorders; diagnostic criteria for panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder; telling our stories.
CLASS 4:
Basics About the Brain: Functions of key brain areas; research on functional and structural brain abnormalities in the major mental illnesses; chemical messengers in the brain; genetic research; infectious and developmental “second hits” which may cause mental illness; the biology of recovery.
CLASS 5:
Problem Solving Skills Workshop: How to define a problem; sharing our problem statements; solving the problem; setting limits.
CLASS 6:
Medication Review: How medications work; basic psychopharmacology of schizophrenia, the mood disorders and anxiety disorders; medication side effects; key treatment issues; stages of adherence to medications; early warning signs of relapse.
CLASS 7:
Inside Mental Illness: Understanding the subjective experience of coping with a brain disorder; problems in maintaining self-esteem and positive identity; gaining empathy for the psychological struggle to protect
a person's integrity in mental illness.
CLASS 8:
Communication Skills Workshop: How illness interferes with the capacity to communicate; learning to be clear; how to respond when the topic is loaded; talking to the person behind the symptoms of mental illness.
CLASS 9:
Self-care: Learning about family burden; sharing in relatives self-help groups; handling negative feelings of anger, entrapment, guilt and grief; how to balance our lives.
CLASS 10:
The Vision and Potential of Recovery: Learning about key principles of rehabilitation and model programs of community support; a first-person account of recovery.
CLASS 11:
Advocacy: Challenging the power of stigma in our lives; learning how to change the system;
NSSS
advocacy work; meet a
NSSS advocate.
CLASS 12:
Review, Sharing and Evaluation: Certification ceremony; party!
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