Let’s look at some steps you might take which expand your support network:

1. Turn to others in your extended family for assistance. Ask them to take some partial responsibility for the care of your ill relative.
2. Find community supports to allow for your own RESPITE. Consider friends,church social groups and now local authorities. Try to enlarge your network to identify caring people in your world whom you can turn to when you need a break. One of the worst consequences of stigma in mental illness is the way that it isolates families, and makes them feel disloyal when they divulge their ill families problems in order to ask help for themselves.
3. Continue to educate yourself. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
4. Get supportive family consultation for yourself ie professional counselling for families.
5. Massage, meditation, prayer, exercise and relaxation tapes all help.