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NAMI offers shoulder for families of mentally ill

Citrus County Chronicle - 1/8/2017

"My description of having mental illness in a family: There is a 10-ton elephant in another room and you know nothing about it until it comes crashing through the wall and sits on you and you look for help - and often there isn't any." - Marilyn Booth, member of NAMI Citrus, from a Chronicle story published in August 2012.

* * *

Dottie Fuller tried to fix things - and failed.

She had watched a close family member struggle with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia for years, and the more she tried to help, the more she realized she couldn't.

"There's a lot of guilt involved," she said.

At one time, she lost contact with the family member for 13 years, but she never stopped worrying.

"In 2010, he moved back to Florida, and it's like, you feel you know how to fix it, but they won't listen," she said. "He moved about an hour away, but I still continued to help him, bringing groceries or doing whatever was needed, and I became an enabler to the point where it gave me high blood pressure. That's when I knew something had to be done."

She heard about NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and went to a meeting about four years ago.

Recently, Fuller completed the NAMI Family to Family program, a free 12-week course that's designed to educate, uplift and encourage people who live with and love people with mental illness.

The NAMI curriculum covers topics such as the basics of schizophrenia, depression, bipolar and other disorders, basics of brain biology, medication, problem solving, empathy, communication skills, self-care, fighting the stigma of mental illness, financial information such as setting up a trust, advocacy and rehabilitation.

"You learn it's not their fault and it's not your fault," Fuller said. "It's an illness."

The program is not taught by professionals, but by family members to other family members, from a "been there, done that" perspective rather than statistics and studies.

"It was eye-opening," Fuller said. "The one that really hit me was about how we go through grief ... I had lost my husband and was dealing with grief, and it dawned on me that that's just what I was feeling about my family member, because you've lost this person who is not coming back."

She said she also appreciated the workshops that help family members work out and practice better communication skills.

Also, many people with mental illness take things extremely literally, explained Family to Family facilitator Gerri Pennington.

The program helps people find ways to tailor their communication according to their loved one's needs, to be clear and how to communicate when a topic is "loaded."

"I used to try to outscream him, and I'm not a screamer," Fuller said. "Over time, I began to relax."

Fuller added that the program helped her find hope, although not the kind of hope she once had.

"You have this hope that once you find the right doctor and finally get the right meds that everything's going to be all right - not," she said. "It never ends. But you have brief times - you learn, like the Serenity Prayer says, to accept the things you cannot change. And, of course, my hope is in God. I think of the (Bible) verse: 'God is able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we could ever ask or think.' And I pray."

Pennington said she also leans on her faith.

"Not necessarily that everything will turn out the way I want it, but that it will be OK," she said. "God gives you a way to cope with it and to survive it."

* * *

The next 12-week NAMI Family to Family course will start when enough people who are interested sign up. Pennington said they need 10-12 people for a successful class.

She also said this program would be beneficial to clergy members because of the numbers of people with mental illness who sit in the pews.

Those who are interested can learn more about the program at the next monthly NAMI Citrus support group at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 9, at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 439 County Road 486, Hernando.

For information, call 844-687-6264 or email namicitrus@gmail.com.