Programs & Services

    Print Friendly and PDF     Font Resize Decrease font size Increase font size
Programs and Services Overview

NAMI Basics

What is NAMI Basics?

NAMI Basics is the new signature education program for parents and other caregivers of children and adolescents living with mental illnesses.  The NAMI Basics course is taught by trained teachers who are the parent or other caregivers of individuals who developed the symptoms of mental illness prior to the age of 13 years.

The course consists of six classes, each lasting for 2 ½ hours.   Classes may be offered weekly for six consecutive weeks, or may be offered twice

per week for three weeks to accommodate the hectic schedules of parents. 

All instruction materials are FREE to participants.

NAMI Family to Family

What is NAMI’s Family-to-Family Program?

The NAMI Family-to-Family Education Program is a free, 12-week course for family caregivers of individuals with severe mental illnesses. 

  • The course is taught by trained family members 
  • All instruction and course materials are free to class participants
  • Over 300,000 family members have graduated from this national program

What does the course include?

  • Current information about schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder (manic depression), panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and co-occurring brain disorders and addictive disorders
  • Up-to-date information about medications, side effects, and strategies for medication adherence
  • Current research related to the biology of brain disorders and the evidence-based, most effective treatments to promote recovery
  • Gaining empathy by understanding the subjective, lived experience of a person with mental illness
  • Learning in special workshops for problem solving, listening, and communication techniques
  • Acquiring strategies for handling crises and relapse
  • Focusing on care for the caregiver: coping with worry, stress, and emotional overload
  • Guidance on locating appropriate supports and services within the community
  • Information on advocacy initiatives designed to improve and expand services

NAM Peer-to-Peer

What is NAMI’s Peer-to-Peer Program?

Peer-to-Peer is a unique, experiential learning program for people with any serious mental illness who are interested in establishing and maintaining their wellness and recovery.

  • The course was written by Kathryn Cohan McNulty, a person with a psychiatric disability who is also a former provider and manager in the mental health field and a longtime mutual support group member and facilitator.
  • An advisory board comprised of NAMI consumer members, in consultation with Joyce Burland, Ph.D., author of the successful NAMI Family-to-Family Education program, helped guide the curriculum’s development.
  • Since 2005, NAMI’s Peer-to-Peer Recovery Program has been supported by AstraZeneca.

What does the course include?

  • Peer-to-Peer consists of ten two-hour units and is taught by a team of two trained “Mentors” and a volunteer support person who are personally experienced at living well with mental illness.
  • Mentors are trained in an intensive three day training session and are supplied with teaching manuals.
  • Participants come away from the course with a binder of hand-out materials, as well as many other tangible resources: an advance directive; a “relapse prevention plan” to help identify tell-tale feelings, thoughts, behavior, or events that may warn of impending relapse and to organize for intervention; mindfulness exercises to help focus and calm thinking; and survival skills for working with providers and the general public.

NAMI In Our Own Voice

What is IOOV?

In Our Own Voice (IOOV) is a unique public education program developed by NAMI, in which two trained consumer speakers share compelling personal stories about living with mental illness and achieving recovery.

The program was started with a grant from Eli Lily and Company.

IOOV is an opportunity for those who have struggled with mental illness to gain confidence and to share their individual experiences of recovery and transformation.

Throughout the IOOV presentation, audience members are encouraged to offer feedback and ask questions. Audience participation is an important aspect of IOOV because the more audience members become involved, the closer they come to understanding what it is like to live with a mental illness and stay in recovery.

IOOV presentations are given to consumer groups, students, law enforcement officials, educators, providers, faith community members, politicians, professionals, inmates, and interested civic groups.

All presentations are offered free of charge.

 

To become a presenter for this program, please view the following training information and then complete the application below.

Click Here for More Information on Upcoming In Our Own Voice and Ending the Silence Presenter Trainings

Click Here for IOOV Presenter Application

 

NAMI Connection Recovery Support

NAMI Connection Recovery Support Group

NAMI Connection is a weekly recovery support group for people living with mental illness in which people learn from each others’ experiences, share coping strategies, and offer each other encouragement and understanding.

 

 

 

What Is Hearts & Minds?

The NAMI Hearts & Minds program is an online, interactive, educational initiative promoting the idea of wellness in both mind and body. Wellness is an ongoing process of learning how to make choices that support a more successful, healthy life.

Engaging in a wellness effort can make a huge difference in the quality of your life. One study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that taking the wellness approach can result in a 17 percent decline in total medical visits and a 35 percent decline in medical visits for minor illnesses.

Wellness is about the individual; you can decide what parts of your life you would like to change and you can determine your own success.

Parents & Teachers as Allies

Parents & Teachers as Allies

In-Service Mental Health Education for School Professionals

NAMI is delighted to announce the expansion of our Parents and Teachers as Allies in-service mental health education program for school professionals.  This two-hour in-service program focuses on helping school professionals and families within the school community better understand the early warning signs of mental illnesses in children and adolescents and how best to intervene so that youth with mental health treatment needs are linked with services. It also covers the lived experience of mental illnesses and how schools can best communicate with families about mental health related concerns.

This program responds to the recommendations included in Goal 4 of President Bush’s New Freedom Commission report on mental health that calls for schools to play a larger role in the early identification of mental health treatment needs in children and in linking them to appropriate services.  Our program is based on NAMI’s highly successful Parents and Teachers as Allies (P&TA) publication.

The components of the in-service education program for school professionals include the following:

  1. Welcome and Introductions – an education professional, who is also a family member, welcomes the school professionals and introduces the topics to be covered, often with a personal story.
  2. Early Warning Signs of Mental Illnesses – a facilitator walks the school professionals through the early warning signs of mental illnesses, closely following the P&TA publication.
  3. Family Response – a parent or caregiver of a child with mental illness covers the predictable stages of emotional reactions among family members dealing with the challenges of mental illness and the lived experience of raising a child with a mental illness.
  4. Living with Mental Illness – a mental health consumer that experienced the early onset of mental illness shares a view from the inside, including a discussion about the positive and negative impact that their school experience had on their life.
  5. Group Discussion
  6. Closing Remarks and Evaluation

This program is designed for teachers, administrators, school health professionals, parents and others in the school community. 

The program is designed to target schools in urban, suburban, rural, and culturally diverse communities.  The toolkit has been developed to be culturally sensitive and a Spanish language version of the Parents & Teachers as Allies publication has been developed.

NAMI Provider Education Program

NAMI Provider Education Program

What is NAMI Provider Education?

The NAMI Provider Education Program is a 5-week course that presents a penetrating, subjective view of family and consumer experiences with serious mental illness to line staff at public agencies who work directly with people experiencing severe and persistent mental illnesses.

The course helps providers realize the hardships that families and consumers face and appreciate the courage and persistence it takes to live with and recover from mental illness.

How is the Provider Education course unique?

The Provider Course emphasizes the involvement of consumers and family members as faculty in provider-staff training.  The teaching team consists of five people:

  • Two family members trained as Family-to-Family Education Program teachers;
  • Two consumers who are knowledgeable about their own mental illness, have a supportive relationship with their families, and are dedicated to the process of recovery; and
  • A mental health professional who is also a family member or consumer.

Few teaching programs employ consumers in this kind of sustained training effort in which they are paid to participate on a teaching team as they present a 5-week course.

The course reflects a new knowledge base -- the “lived experiences” of people coping with a mental illness or caring for someone who lives with a mental illness.  Including this deeply personal perspective creates an appreciable difference in the program’s content.  It adds a means of teaching the emotional aspects and practical consequences of these illnesses to the academic medical information in the course.

 

 

 

Discover the Resources at NAMI FaithNet

NAMI National FaithNet has exciting new resources for utilization by NAMI members in their advocacy to their places of worship.  These resources are available for downloading on NAMI FaithNet’s Web site, (www.nami.org/faithnet).

These new modules are proving to be very helpful in developing ministry for those with a mental illness and their families in Faith Communities.  I encourage you to review them on the NAMI FaithNet website.

To effectively utilize these Power-Point presentations for self or group study, it is necessary to download the files and save them to your desk top.  This will enable you to access the notes section which is essential to gain the full value of the training.  The slides by themselves only contain the main points.  The notes are made available by clicking on View in the tool bar at the top of your screen after the Power Point slides have been downloaded.

Educational Modules available at www.nami.org/faithnet.

Education leads to understanding.

Understanding leads to empathy.

Empathy leads to loving compassionate care.

Education leads to understanding.  Understanding leads to empathy. Empathy leads to loving compassionate care.  Because of the need for education to start this chain reaction, NAMI FaithNet of Orange County has initiated a monthly training and sharing session (except  December) for those attempting to initiate or expand ministry with those affected by mental illness.  This month’s session included a discussion of NAMI FaithNet’s outreach and other NAMI programs (e.g. Family to Family, Peer to Peer and etc.), which can play an important role in the education of those in our congregations who have a mental illness and their families. 

These new modules are also designed to be helpful for advocating to our fellow parishioners who do not have a mental illness.  Reaching the 80% who do not have a mental illness or have a family member with one of these “no fault” disorders is particularly important in our attempts to develop a sustained ministry in Faith Communities.

Please be assured that these modules are not intended to replace any of NAMI’s programs.  They are designed to work hand-in-hand with them.  Those of us on the six member NAMI National FaithNet advisory group strongly recommend taking NAMI’s Family to Family or Peer to Peer class before participating in Faith Community outreach.               

Reaching out to Faith Communities

 Bridges of Hope

We have two educational modules on our Web site, which are composed of Power Point slides and discussion notes for each slide.  Although some of the content is similar, these two Power Point modules have different purposes. 

The “Reaching Out to Faith Communities” module is a four-part training curriculum.  It is a self-guided instruction for individuals and groups.  It is useful for all NAMI members, but particularly useful for those who desire more training and preparation before engaging with religious communities

While the four sections are designed to be used consecutively and as a whole, they each can be studied independently.  Each section has about 40 Power Point slides plus corresponding notes.

 “Laying the Foundation” is Part 1 of our “Reaching out to Faith Communities” module.   It provides basic information about NAMI and NAMI FaithNet, the impact of untreated mental illness on our community, and why the Faith Community is such a valuable partner in mental health education, support and advocacy.

“Opening the Door to Understanding and Dialogue about Mental Illness” is part 2.  It emphasizes the social, spiritual and practical impact of mental illness on individuals, family members, friends and co-workers.

“Sharing your Story” is part 3. It provides training for those who desire to more effectively tell their story about mental illness plus the role that NAMI and their faith have played in their journey toward recovery.

Sharing your story is particularly important when speaking to your clergy person, which I recommend as the first step in one’s attempt to initiate or expand ministry with those affected by mental illness.   When a member of the clergy in your own place of worship hears your story, he or she will become personally involved.  Personal involvement is by far the most successful mode of education.  When a clergyperson recognizes that 1 in 5 families in his or her congregation have someone with a serious mental illness and 1 in 10 of those sitting in the pews during worship services have one of these “No Fault” disorders, he or she will recognize the importance of developing ministry to, with and from them.

“Looking Ahead and Following Up” is part 4. It addresses some common challenges involved with outreach to faith communities.  It will also help you look down the road to other ways that may unfold as you continue the dialogue with faith communities.

Whereas the “Reaching Out to Faith Communities” module is intended for self or group study, the shorter second module, “Bridges of Hope,” is intended to be used for presentations to entire congregations or groups within a congregation.      

“Bridges of Hope” is a ready-to use, adaptable Power Point presentation, which is written from an interfaith perspective.  Therefore, it is useful for any faith-based organization.  If all of the 42 slides and all of the corresponding notes of this module are used, the presentation will last about 60 minutes.- 

For shorter presentations the presenter can pick and choose from the slides and notes.  This is important, because there is a great variation in the allotted time for presentations within a place of worship.

 Please keep in mind that if we want change, we have to get out there and bring it about. It won’t happen without us.

 


 

NAMI ENDING THE SILENCE PROGRAM:

A MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION PROGRAM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

WHAT IS ENDING THE SILENCE?

Ending the Silence is a 50-minute program designed for high school audiences and is typically presented in the freshman/sophomore health classes during the mental health portion of the curriculum. This transformational program is devoted to giving students an opportunity to learn about mental illness through an informative PowerPoint, short videos, and personal testimony. Through the presentation, students learn symptoms and indicators of mental illness, and are given ideas about how to help themselves, friends, or family members who may be in need of support.

HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS:

The program is delivered by a trained two-person team, including an individual who relates to the student population by sharing their own journey with a diagnosable mental health condition.

Students are given a resource card with valuable phone numbers and websites for mental health agencies and youth support services along with a list of symptoms/warning signs of mental illness. At the conclusion of the presentation, postcards are mailed home to parents informing them of the program. Students are also given information regarding additional programs and services they can utilize for support.

A primary goal of this program is to create a generation of students that are well-positioned to eradicate the stigma associated with mental illness through education and advocacy.

HOW CAN I BRING ENDING THE SILENCE TO MY SCHOOL?

Contact your local NAMI affiliate, or Beth Larkins, the NAMI California ETS Program Coordinator, at 916-567-0163 or beth.larkins@namicalifornia.org to learn how you can bring this educational program to your school. You can find the nearest NAMI affiliate offering the ETS program by contacting Beth Larkins.

For additional information on the Ending the Silence Program, please visit www.endingthesilence.org.