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Shasta County family members of the mentally ill want help too

Record Searchlight (Redding, CA) - 8/28/2014

Aug. 28--REDDING, California -- It's not hard to find someone who thinks Shasta County needs more treatment options for mentally ill people. But a bulk of the suggestions at a Wednesday meeting in Redding looking for input on new mental health programs focused on the needs of their family members, too.

The Mental Health Services Act stakeholder meeting at the Redding Library asked stakeholders -- which everyone is, county officials say, since mental illness has a broad reach -- what kinds of programs the county should start offering with its money from the state act, which taxes millionaires extra to pay for new mental health programs.

One member of the audience suggested a multidisciplinary team made up of professionals, those who have overcome a mental illness and others to give guidance to family members at a loss over how to handle their loved one.

"We don't just need peer support, we need professional input because three moms could get together and it may go nowhere," another woman said in agreement.

Someone else suggested a "buddy system" for family members of mentally ill people to find other mothers or grandmothers, for example, to help support each other. And another audience member floated the idea of a kids' center for children who have a mentally ill family member to find solace.

Jo Phillips of Redding had a family member diagnosed with mental illness for the first time this summer, and the experience is a first for her.

"We didn't know how to talk to him," she said.

Phillips said family members new to dealing with a mentally ill relative need a "crash course" where they can get help and advice at a moment's notice.

"Something that is immediate, because you don't know what to do or where to go," she said. "And where you went, there was no help." Of course, there were plenty more traditional requests for service for the mentally ill community, including transportation, healthcare advocates, places to go for care after-hours besides an emergency room and transitional services for inmates recently released from prison.

Jamie Hannigan, Shasta County Health and Human Services Agency program manager and the county's MHSA coordinator, said the consensus she got from the meeting seems to be that people want a sort of mental health resource center with multiple kinds of services suggested Wednesday, so the next step is for her to float that idea by other stakeholders.

"That's the way it looks now," she said after the meeting.

The issue of effective treatment is crucial, Hannigan said, so part of the MHSA mandates questions be attached to each project to measure whether they're actually working.

"It's not just a diagnosis -- it's way bigger than that, and you can't just treat it by writing a prescription," she said.

If not, the center could be swapped for another MHSA project, as happened with another county program that wasn't seeing big results, Hannigan said.

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