Understanding family perspectives on supported employment.

Background: One integral way by which individuals in recovery pursue meaning and productivity in their lives is via employment. Unfortunately, the vast majority of individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) who express the desire to work remain unemployed. Families have the potential to play an important role in the domain of supported employment (SE), though may not have the knowledge or skills to do so.

Family members' of persons living with a serious mental illness: experiences and efforts to cope with stigma.

Background: Studies have indicated that family members of persons with mental illness often experience stigma in relation to their relatives' illness. Less is known about the type of experiences they face and how they cope with these experiences.

Aims: To explore family members' experiences and efforts to cope with mental illness stigma in social encounters.

In our own voice-family companion: reducing self-stigma of family members of persons with serious mental illness.

Objective: This article reports preliminary findings from a novel, family peer-based intervention designed to reduce self-stigma among family members of people with serious mental illness.

Methods: A total of 158 primary caregivers of patients with schizophrenia were recruited from a large urban mental health facility (93 caregivers) or from a family and consumer advocacy organization (65 caregivers). Caregivers (N=122) who reported they perceived at least a moderate level of mental illness-related stigma were evaluated on measures of self-stigma, withdrawal, secrecy, anxiety, and social comparison and randomly assigned to receive one of two, one-session group interventions: a peer-led intervention (In Our Own Voice-Family Companion [IOOV-FC]) designed to stimulate group discussion or a clinician-led family education session, which delivered information about mental illness in a structured, didactic format.