Alliance offers hope for those touched by mental illness

By Kim Palchikoff

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2015 | 2 a.m.

The Nevada chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)has its annual conference this week in Las Vegas.

This may not mean much to a city known for endless conferences and thousands of hotel rooms. But to those of us who face mental health challenges or have a family member, friend, colleague, neighbor or an acquaintance who has experienced difficulties with their state of mind, it’s worth talking about.

NAMI has been a saving grace for Nevadans with mental illness in need of a free weekly support group, resources and friendly people willing to help others in need. With chapters in every state, it’s the largest nonprofit national organization that lobbies state and national government. It pressures politicians in Carson City and beyond to pass laws designed to defend and promote the rights of individuals unable to voice their concerns to intimidating men and women in business suits who might not care about our nation’s state of mind.

NAMI cares. It has been caring for decades. This organization is perhaps best known for creating Family to Family, the only national program for families of mentally ill Americans wanting to learn how to help their loved ones. Loving someone with a mental illness — any illness — is often not enough. Participants learn about the medical side of it all and coping skills so they don’t get burned out.

As anyone in the mental health world will tell you, it’s the family support that often determines the success of someone struggling with a medical condition that can seem uncontrollable and overwhelming.

The 12-week educational program is led by NAMI-trained instructors in America and throughout Nevada, themselves family members of mentally ill people who know what it’s like from the inside out.

The best part: it’s free.

I know. My mother, a licensed marriage and family therapist, took the Family to Family course. She loved it. She met other parents with adult children who had bipolar disorder, like me. She learned all about the different medications, the illnesses, tips for how to be helpful and many more things.

The other day, I Skyped her in Italy, where she works. In her formal therapist voice, this is what she had to say about it:

“The Family to Family program offers education, information, and resources and support for families with an adult family member with mental illness. I have taken it two times (10 years apart), and it has helped me be more empathetic to what my daughter goes through day after day. It has also increased my personal coping skills to help me deal with myself and with my daughter. It has connected me to other families who also live with mental illness so that I don’t feel so alone.”

To outsiders, it may seem weird: Why is a 72-year-old woman thinking about how to best help a 47-year-old daughter who still lives in her mother’s house and calls her every day when she’s gone to work abroad? I’ve been told countless times that I need to learn how to stand on my own feet.

“We’re family.” That’s her answer. “Families stick together.” Someday, she says, she might need help.

And for sure, there are plenty of times when I feel like a burden. We all do. It’s normal. And maybe we are sometimes.

But that’s where NAMI Nevada comes in. She has friends now she can call who give her advice and empathize.

People with illnesses — be it schizophrenia, breast cancer or cerebral palsy — need people in their daily lives who care, especially when our government doesn’t seem to.

Kim Palchikoff is a Reno-based freelance writer.