In practical terms, families need information (about mental illness, symptoms, course, prognosis, and services available in the system); they need help in acquiring skills (to cope with the illness and its consequences – problem solving, conflict resolution, communication, assertiveness, stress management), and they need support for themselves in order to go through the hardship of mental illness and resolve their own emotional burden. They need to be helped to build on their strengths, survive their crises, meet their challenges and enhance the quality of their lives. A competence paradigm that replaces the traditional model of pathology that undermined capacity and self esteem can offer a developmental and educational model that focuses on family coping and adaptation, emphasizes the family’s strengths, resources and expertise, and defines relations with professionals as a collaboration, with a sense of mastery and hope.

I suggest that one way to ensure that families receive the attention and support they need is through the creation of a family navigating system. Family navigators are individuals assigned to a family once a relative is diagnosed with a mental illness.

The role of a navigator is to help guide the family through the system, by offering information, support, and referrals to relevant services, and by addressing issues and concerns integral to the course of the illness. (I.e. where would the ill relative live once stable; how to create healthy and supportive relationships that would promote the relative’s recovery while protecting the well-being of the family, etc.)

Navigators could (and should, in my view) be members of community-based organizations, such as family organizations, but they will hardly be effective without the referral and cooperation of the hospitals who diagnose and treat patients. The challenge would be to create a mechanism that could ensure that referrals are done as a matter of course.

The day that each family with a newly diagnosed member will be assigned a “family navigator”, is the day I will feel that families are receiving their fair share of attention and assistance.

Ella Amir
Executive Director
AMI-Quebec Action on mental illness