Supportive Family Training aims to:

• Teach families coping skills to counteract the stress of dealing with a relative with mental illness.
• Teach families to recognise prodromal signs that may be pointing to a relapse and how to take effective measures to avoid relapse.
• Alleviate the burden of stigma that families carry.
• Teach families to deal with crisis and to work more effectively with service providers.
• Reduce families isolation by connecting them with Rethink, Mind, Sane and other mental health charities advocacy and support network.
• Teach families to advocate effectively for their ill relatives and for themselves.

The course balances support and counselling with education and empowerment. It is not intended as a substitute for family therapy or designed to be used as an adjunct to clinical treatment.

In this programme the class teachers function as enablers (giving persons the means or authority sufficient for the purpose) and educators, and the families are regarded as consumers, and not patients or clients.

Although this programme is primarily focused on answering the needs of the families of the mentally ill, it is firmly committed to helping their ill relatives.

The Supportive Family Training and carers training course focuses on the importance of self-care, and acknowledging one’s own needs and limits.

We understand the conflict you may feel between taking care of your own life and your own worry about your mentally ill relative. Concerned families want to feel reassured that when their relatives go out ‘on their own’ that there will be a support system in place. It is very hard to ‘let go’ when there is no one out there to catch your loved ones if and when they fall.

But what if you arrive at a place where you have done everything you possibly can to ensure that there are supports in place for your relative?

Now it is time for you to get the support you need as a carer of the mentally ill. You must find supports that reduce the stress that care-taking imposes on you. You also must try to improve the quality of your life, and try to live as actively and normally as possible.