Supportive Family Training 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.

Supportive Family Training shares many of the goals and values of empowerment, commitment to the possibilities of growth and change, mutual support and acceptance, and non authoritarian stance.

Supportive Family Training attributes the cause of schizophrenia and the affective disorders to neurobiological or chemical factors and not to family pathology. This does not imply that the other needs of the patient are ignored i.e. Social, rehabilitative, vocational, etc.

This perspective gives families the practical answers they have been asking for.

Families want to know what is wrong with their relatives, what is causing them to behave in a bizarre way, what services are available and what they can do to help. This gives families a medical explanation as well as practical advice. It also has the advantage of relieving family stress, guilt and blame.

This perception absolves families from past blame, entitles them to sympathy in the present and engages them as carers in improving the patients prognosis for the future.

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

Contact us for more information about carer support services.