I’ve gone to Nami meetings but I haven’t found any resources yet that are helping my home-bound, isolating 26 year old son. Your thoughts?
It seems like the peer resources such as support groups and education offered by NAMI are for people with insight into their illnesses.
I found a doctor for my family member who came and spoke to the NAMI group; he is the only doctor so far who seems to understand severe mental illness and is very caring.
Different NAMI chapters provide different levels of support and resources. The chapter in Portland, Oregon has a person who comes up with referrals and actual resources. The chapter where I live is all volunteers and one of them is a lawyer; she is constantly making sure no one in the NAMI set of volunteers makes any suggestions of resources at all due to liability, though support group members all share resources in meetings when asked to do so.
When professionals in the mental illness field direct people to NAMI, it’s because they are out of ideas, not because NAMI is actually going to connect the person with mental illness to vital treatment resources (unless maybe it’s like the Portland chapter). NAMI is mostly education and support in most places. And since there are people at the meetings who are going through what your family is going through, they might have found local resources and might tell you about them if you ask.
So, NAMI is a good place to gather information about local resources, be supported emotionally, and become educated.
Do you think you son might benefit from Community Based Rehabilitation Services where someone comes to his home and works with him there and in the community to meet basic daily goals and get out more with support?
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Hey there hereandhere,
Cool name, BTW. Yes, I think our son would benefit from Community Based Rehabilitation Services and we’ve found two locally yet he’s dismissed them as only relevant for indigent people. He’s wrong, of course, but I have to work on that a bit more. This week’s goal is to get him to our health care providers SZ weekly support group meeting. That’s a today thing so I’m going to pray now 
Hugs and thank you for hte ideas. They help!
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