Maximizing Family Resources

Maximizing Family Resources
How well families manage mental illness can depend on the adequacy of the community supports available and how well the families use them. Families dealing with mental illness need community resources similar to those identified by Hatfield (1979) to cope with their situation. These resources are in the form of education, formal and informal support, respite care, and crises services. Giving support to families depends on the degree to which professionals understand the family experience. Grunebaum and Friedman (1988) point out those health-care professionals need to have a nonjudgmental attitude and should try to collaborate with the family. Interventions that seem most useful center around an effort to find the family community support that meets family needs. The health professional needs to help the family balance the demands of mental illness with available resources.

Health professionals need to educate the family about mental illness and encourage the family's active participation in the patient's treatment (Francell, Conn, & Gray, 1988). The professional assists relatives in assigning priorities to their concerns and teaches them basic behavioral techniques for dealing with the patient. The professional facilitates self-help and support among families with similar concerns. Support is offered by the professional, assuming the role of ombudsman lot the family and avoiding assignment of blame for the patient's problems. The professional is an essential link with other parts of the health-care system, helping to identify community resources or to alert the community to the need for a new service. In sum, professionals serve as a role model of effective communicators, educators, advocates, and facilitators for the family.

Education: One important resource health-care professionals can provide is the knowledge that comes from education about mental illness. Families need to understand the patient's behavior and know how to respond helpfully to disturbed behavior. They benefit from a clear.

No technical explanation of the illness, as well as from a prognosis that is as accurate as possible. Families need to know the available treatments, the medication regimen, and the best way to manage the problems of day-to-day living (Chesla, 1989). One particularly perplexing problem for families is to learn how to be sufficiently involved and interested without being either too intrusive or too distant. Feedback on family interactions can be provided with models of effective communication skills. In some families the interactions are disturbed enough to require family therapy.

Specific strategies can be taught by health professionals to help families deal with a mentally ill member. One such strategy involves understanding and controlling one's responses. For example, it may be difficult not to respond to behavior that is disturbing or annoying, but is not harmful to the ill person or to anyone else. It is more useful to focus on harmful or destructive behaviors. Learning what to respond to and how to respond can be accomplished by family members willing to learn from knowledgeable professionals. Families can begin to achieve this skill through open discussion of their feelings and reactions with other family members and friends. This prevents the buildup of indifference and resentment. This technique is especially useful when dealing with a family member who generates strong feelings. This strategy makes it possible to focus energy in more useful directions. The ability to establish this strategy brings a new perspective and a new resolve to engage a disabled family member in more important ways.
Families need to understand that it takes time to learn and establish strategies taught to them by health professionals. If families have not been coping successfully or have been feeling especially stressed, 2 to 3 years of effort may be necessary to turn their lives around. Change involves a decision, but it also involves learning of new behaviors, a great deal of practice, and substantial support.
Finally, families need education about patient behaviors that could indicate a recurrence so that they know when to encourage the patient to seek help before hospitalization is required. Available resources in the community should be identified early in the illness. Group education sessions for families can be worthwhile because participants can share experiences while they learn.

Seed Newsvine

Bookmark this article in your preferred program

Comments

Add Comment

Popular Articles in this cathegory

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.