Loved One with a Serious Mental Illness

You’ve been the support system for your loved one—isn’t it time you get your own support, too?

• Needing your own mental health support to process feelings related to having a loved one with mental illness?

• Wanting to learn skills to:

  • Manage burnout and exhaustion

  • Cope with your loved one’s ups and downs

  • Better communicate with them and their healthcare providers?

• Looking to work through trauma related to your experiences of loving someone with mental illness?

• Longing to reconnect to yourself—things like your needs, wants, boundaries, hobbies, and dreams?

Mental illness is common. But when it comes to mental health support for families and friends of people with mental illness—not so much.

Given that 1 in 5 adults in the US live with mental illness, the odds are that the majority of us have shared a connection with someone with mental illness.¹ Whether you’re the parent of an adult with mental health issues, or have a parent, partner, friend, relative, colleague, or spouse with serious mental illness (SMI), it has likely had a strong impact on your life. 

SMI is defined as a mental illness that is on the more severe end of the spectrum and “that interferes with a person’s life and ability to function,” according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).²  Moreover, SAMHSA emphasizes that SMI “is not a choice, a weakness, or a character flaw.”² Examples of SMIs include bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, and major depressive disorder.

For people dealing with SMI, getting support from family, friends, and healthcare providers is essential. But what about the people close to them? They, too, need support. This fact often gets overlooked.

When those close to someone with SMI don’t get their own support, this can contribute to:

• Burnout

• Isolation

• Chronic stress

• Caregiver fatigue, impaired ability to caretake, and poorer outcomes for the loved one with SMI

• Codependent behaviors

• Mental health symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD

The bottom line? If you have a parent, child, close friend, relative, partner, or spouse with mental health issues, it’s vital that you get support, too. 

When the people close to a loved one with mental illness get their own support, such as working with a trauma-informed psychotherapist, it helps to lift everybody up in the situation. System or family support for mental illness creates an optimal environment for increased well-being, healthier relationships, and even recovery (defined as the person with SMI being able to have good quality of life while managing their SMI).

“The humanity we all share is more important than the mental illnesses we may not.”

― ELYN R. SAKS