The Healing Power of Groups
Being a care-taker can be time-consuming and isolating. I remember when my son was first diagnosed with schizophrenia during the spring semester of his senior year in high school. I not only felt caught off guard and devastated but we began an endless round of treatments and medications, arranging ways for him to finish school, figuring out what to do next, and trying to make guesses about how long this first debilitating phase would last. My husband and I had little time to seek personal support outside of our immediate family. We managed to survive but it was trying and stressful for all of us. By the time Jacob had his second relapse in college, we recognized our need for help and encouragement from outside our immediate circle.
One of our best decisions was to enroll in the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Family to Family program. The experience cut through our sense of isolation and validated what I, as a psychologist, knew about the healing aspects of group support. Irvin D Yalom (1975), an early and well-known researcher in the field of group therapy, found that being with others who have similar experiences can be healing in and of itself. The NAMI program was facilitated by volunteers, usually parents or relatives of someone with a serious mental illness. Here we also met families who were coping with mental illness at various stages. We could offer understanding to those who were facing challenges for the first time and we could receive hope and ideas from those who were further along the recovery process. Group support decreased the sense of isolation that Glen and I had been experiencing. We didn’t have any friends with a son who was diagnosed with schizophrenia but we came away from the group knowing that many other people were experiencing or had experienced similar difficulties. That was a game-changer. The take-away message to us was, “if other families are figuring out how to manage, maybe we can too.”
The group was much more than just a place to make connections. We had the opportunity to vent our frustrations or hear about the trouble of others in a setting where we felt understood. The atmosphere was accepting and non-judgmental. No one labeled us as the cause of our son's illness, a common mis-perception among some people, nor did we feel uncomfortable discussing our struggles. Being able to vent our frustrations and feel understood can be crucial parts of the healing process.
To be most effective, groups also have to move beyond the venting phase. Christina Maslach (2017), who has written much about stress management and burnout, has found that venting your frustrations with friends or family may not be helpful if that is all you do. Just venting can keep you stuck or increase your focus on frustrations, whereas good group process also includes ways to gain new approaches to solving the problems that you face. As part of this group, each member received a binder that we filled with handouts from each class, which included local resources as well as up-to-date research about various mental health diagnoses. Thanks to these resources and the interaction with others, we came away from the group with a plan about how we were going to approach our challenges with Jacob. We left our group feeling more hopeful that change for Jacob and for us was not only possible, but likely.
Thanks to our group experience, Glen and I developed a more unified approach and found ways to respond to challenges more strategically and calmly. Even with newfound information, support and energy, the process of helping my son cope with his serious mental illness can still be challenging, but not nearly as difficult as it used to be. Do we still flounder at times? Absolutely! But we now have more resources.
Maslach, C (2017). Finding Solutions to the Problem of Burnout. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 69(2): 143–152.
www.nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education/NAMI-family-to-family
Yalom, I D (1975). The Basic Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy. New York, New York: Basic Books, Inc. American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, Va. American Psychiatric Association.
Linda Snow Griffin, Ph.D. is retired from her psychology practice of 30 years but continues to be a mental health advocate and author. Her book, Hope and Learning – Our Journey with Schizophrenia, will be published September 30, 2021 by Cherish Editions. It will be available in bookstores, cherisheditions.com, and amazon.com.