Skip to transcript of Episode 12
Show Notes
Lori Krinksy joins Candida and Jo-Ann to discuss her involvement with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). Lori is her local chapter’s president (volunteer) and walks us through NAMI’s national, state, and local programs and resources. NAMI is volunteer-driven, with some paid staff at the national and state levels. The 600 local chapters, while connected to the national organization, are run by volunteers and thus vary in program offerings and availability of resources.
Lori tells us how NAMI was founded in the 1970s by a group of parents of young adults with mental illness who connected in a waiting room and realized that accessing mental health care was too complicated and often overwhelming. They wanted to help others avoid some of the frustrations and pitfalls and to help others know they were not alone. Unfortunately the mental health system is still extremely difficult to navigate, as Lori learned when she helped a family member with mental health challenges. Lori determined when she could see the light at the end of the tunnel she would work to help others on this journey.
The three main prongs of NAMI’s work are support, education, and advocacy.
Support includes connections to peers for individuals living with mental illness, peer connections for family members, and basics for caregivers of minors. There is a helpline (not a crisis line) to help connect to local resources and providers.
Education includes sharing accurate information about mental illness across many settings, educating about mental health care systems and how to navigate them, training first responders, and working with schools to eliminate stigma around mental illness.
NAMI is also active in advocacy at all levels, including working to get the 988 suicide and crisis hotline up and running, supporting reimbursement of telehealth appointments, and promoting structural supports in schools, among others. This list is incomplete. Refer to the list below for links to NAMI resources.
Resources
| Timely Notice NAMI Central Middlesex MA “College and Your Mental Health” webinar 3/18/24, 7:00 pm ET, will not be recorded Learn more and register: namicentralmiddlesex.org/newsletter/february-2024/college-and-your-mental-health |
NAMI National – National Alliance on Mental Illness
800-950-NAMI (800-950-6264)
NAMI Help Line and Teen & Young Adult Help Line
Call 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), Text 62640, Chat nami.org/help, M-F 10:00-10:00 ET
NAMI Teen & Young Adult Resource Directory
NAMI Mental Health College Guide
NAMI Family to Family
https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education/NAMI-Family-to-Family
NAMI Peer-to-Peer
https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education/NAMI-Peer-to-Peer
NAMI Basics
https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education/NAMI-Basics
NAMI In Our Own Voice
https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education/NAMI-In-Our-Own-Voice
NAMI Walks
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline https://988lifeline.org
NAMI Ending the Silence
https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education/NAMI-Ending-the-Silence
Local Programs
To find programs in your area search for your NAMI state organization which may connect you to a local NAMI affiliate.
Programs for parents/guardians include: Family Support Groups, Family to Family Classes, Basics Class.
Programs for classrooms: Ending the Silence.
Episode 12 AI-Generated transcript, lightly edited for clarity
Jo-Ann Berry: Good morning, Candida.
Candida Fink: Good morning, Jo. Nice to see you.
Jo-Ann Berry: You too. Welcome back to another episode of Mental Health Goes to School. I’m Jo-Ann Berry. I’m a special educator.
Candida Fink: And I’m Dr. Candida Fink, a child psychiatrist.
Jo-Ann Berry: And today with us, our guest is Lori Krinsky, who is a local chapter president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She’s going to tell us about the organization and about the many resources and programs that they offer. So, if you’re listening, we will put all the links and, information in the show notes. So don’t worry about, catching every little bit. It will be there in writing for you to see. But Lori can talk about, the different programs and stuff and what the resources are. So welcome, Lori.
Candida Fink: Hi, Lori.
Lori Krinski: Thank you very much.
Candida Fink: Thank you for being here. This is a great opportunity for our listeners.
Jo-Ann Berry: Yeah, what is NAMI and what’s it all about?
Lori Krinski: I’d like to talk a little bit about how I kind of found NAMI to start with because people don’t often anticipate joining an organization like this. That’s not something you plan for later. So, when I had a family member diagnosed with a serious mental health condition, there were many, many challenges in our mostly broken behavioral health system.
I did call 25 therapists before I found one to take our case. When we first were looking, we had a low reimbursement rate on our insurance, so my person was often discharged from programs or hospitals before they were ready. I was told multiple times by one hospital staff member or another, don’t worry, it’ll be okay. Just don’t leave him alone for a second. And that happened more than once.
It was isolating in the community. You didn’t talk to anybody about it. You didn’t know who to turn to. We had schedules, appointments, and places to drive to constantly. The doctor will see you at noon kind of requests, tussles with pharmacies, things had to go through many hoops, depending on the medication. You pick up a lot of medication. If you’re dealing with a minor that says on the label, suicide ideation is the side effect of this. Well, isn’t that what we’re trying to get rid of? So it was very challenging, and I would ask my friends or talk to my friends about it, and they didn’t know how to help me, because they didn’t have the experience.
So, I made a pact with myself when we were going through these very challenging years, and it is years, that I would try to help other people if I could find the light at the end of the tunnel. So, when the light started glowing a little bit, I searched around for mental health organizations and I literally visited local boards, because I had a pretty long volunteer experience and could spot a volunteer board that was working well or one that I wasn’t. And I found the local NAMI and I took one of their classes. That’s been eight years now.
So, I serve as the volunteer president of the local affiliate. Now, NAMI was invented or developed or created, back in 1979 by a couple of parents who met each other in a psychiatrist waiting room and came to the conclusion that this isn’t working. No one’s listening to us. We need a community, and they grew it up from there.
NAMI has three levels. The national organization, where some of the programs are, the curriculum is developed, and the copyrights are there. They start with content there. And then there are state organizations in all the states in the United States. And then there are geographically oriented local affiliates and about 600 of those across the country. Some of them are stronger than others. It’s very much of a grassroots organization and it’s almost all volunteers. It’s probably half a dozen people or ten people running state organizations. In some instances, those are paid positions, but everybody who does everything else is a volunteer across the country. Almost all of our programs are free. And local affiliates and state affiliates also have other programs beyond what we call the signature programs that are offered across the country and created and supervised.
Candida Fink: What a set of resources, really, and how it’s grown from the ground up. It’s a remarkable story and remarkable resources. I think it’s so important for people to hear about this and know more about what’s available and what you guys do. So, this is great.
Jo-Ann Berry: I guess a lot of people who were in the position that you were in when a family member, there’s no roadmap when this happens. So how does somebody, access the resources of NAMI in any individual local area?
Lori Krinski: Well, I would just like to comment just one bit on your no roadmap thing. When you think about Health care in general, whatever, “This hurts, I’m going to my primary care doctor,” and the primary care doctor says, “Yes, it does. I’m going to give you the name of someone who’s very specific and will work with that one part of your body for you, and here’s an appointment,” and that’s where you go. That doesn’t happen with mental health. I called my pediatrician. He’s like, I don’t know.
And they’re trying to change that, but that is a big part of it. There is no roadmap. So NAMI’s outreach kind of falls under three umbrellas or tools. I call them often the tools that NAMI uses, to reach out to people and support them. Many in the mental health community seek connection and information in a safe space with someone who can empathize with their situation. Like I said, I called my friends. They were like, I don’t know what to tell you. You need to talk to somebody who has traveled your road. So, the three tools that NAMI uses are support, education, and advocacy. So, I’m going to go over generally, the programs that are out there, and then after that, we can maybe talk about specifics about programs, for families of students or for teens and young adults, which is probably the highlight of your audience.
Jo-Ann Berry: Right?
Lori Krinski: So, under support, there are two basic kinds of support groups that are offered across the country. The connection support groups are for adults concerned about their own mental health, and the family support groups are for someone who supports someone or lives with someone with a serious mental health condition. These kinds of scenarios affect the entire household, and they often come on dramatically in ways that people have never experienced and certainly no one ever talked about within their family or their cultural environment. and then the other big support thing that’s available is NAMI’s helpline. Now, a helpline is not a crisis line. This is not a scenario where there’s suicide ideation and you need immediate care, but it is a place to call and talk about where you’re standing, talk about next steps, and just to chat about riding the roller coaster a little bit. That number is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI or 6264). And that’s available Monday through Friday, 10 AM-10 PM.
The next tool I’m going to talk about is our education options. And those fall under kind of a couple of categories on their own. Again, the sharing of our experience is very important information about diagnosis and treatment. There’s lots of stuff online now, but NAMI has some very succinct, information to learn about there, getting to know the behavioral healthcare system. And that’s going to be different in your state, it’s going to be different in my locale. So that’s part of connecting more locally rather than above and beyond the NAMI.org website. The three signature courses that we have. Well, let me back up a little bit. We have the behavioral healthcare system that we learned about. And then, challenging stigma is also another big education, push for NAMI.
So if we look towards the national, state, and local level there are all levels of websites there, and there are podcasts, webinars, blogs, and there are resources and links all over the place. So, the closer you get to your local affiliate, the closer you’re going to get to those specific links. but when you first encounter the scenario, it’s good to go to NAMI.org and start there. You’ll see there that there are three courses that we offer across the country generally, one is peer-to-peer. So that’s for the individuals with a mental health condition. The other is family to family, for family members and friends in general. And then our basics class is, for parents of minors. And in many instances, those are all available online, so much more accessible than before. Community programs for education fall under the anti-stigma scenario in some instances. The most popular one is called “In Our Own Voice.” And that’s two people with mental health conditions and a video component. They take turns talking about what happened, what helped, and what’s next.
So, we do these programs in behavioral health inpatient units. We do them at a religious organization. We’ll do them for the Rotary club, we’ll do them at a School, we’ll do them anywhere people want to listen to them. So, it puts a personal face on mental health, and it reduces stigma. It’s helpful for the public, it’s very helpful for somebody who’s new to mental health conditions and they can see somebody else who’s gone through the road and trying to reach the other side of it. It doesn’t say everything’s okay, and we’re done because that’s not how it works, but it’s a very strong program.
NAMI volunteers help train first responders across the country in many situations. Some states have programs specifically for veterans. There’s information for frontline workers on the NAMI website. There are programs that encourage students to speak up about mental health. Another one that I like to talk about under the education umbrella is NAMI Walks, which is really our giant fundraiser. And they are all across the country. They’re not on one day in the whole country, that would just be way too complicated. but each state will have one, traditionally in the spring or in the fall or whatever. And it is a big fundraiser, and that’s a big portion of how NAMI survives.
But it’s also a big stigma free day out in the world. Everybody can be together. No one’s going to judge you that day. We’re all hanging out. We’re with you. and that’s a huge thing in your heart that you need. Things that I’ve done locally for education – we’ve created credit card size crisis cards that have the new 988 number on them. We’ve got some new crisis information in our state. So we passed out 18,000 of those in our local area. So those went to providers primarily to hand over to somebody, as opposed to a library, kind of give one out to everyone thing to try to get the folks that need to learn about those new response systems. I’ve had a webinar about youth mental health. I’ve had a webinar about the mental health workforce constraints. And I had one called “Take 15 for 988.” So that was a 15-minute Zoom call just to learn about how that broke through.
Candida Fink: Wow.
Lori Krinski: So that covers two of our tools. The next one would be advocacy and that also happens on all three levels, national, state, and local examples. On the national level we can include the 988 number. So, the national suicide crisis lifeline used to be a 1-800 number that I personally have typed thousands of times, but don’t know what it is. But I can remember 988, and so can everybody else. So, yes, that was a good idea. And calls have gone up dramatically on that. NAMI and other organizations were definitely part of the years’ long advocacy effort to define the behavioral Health crisis response to include three pillars: someone to talk to, someone to respond, and somewhere to go. So, 988 is a big part of that. And many states are growing crisis response opportunities under that. We had a day of advocacy again, NAMI and other organizations, and they got about, I think it was 57,000 emails to legislators.
Jo-Ann Berry: Wow.
Lori Krinski: Advocates are out there. We’re working hard, and we could use more help.
Candida Fink: Yes.
Lori Krinski: A secondary national level thing was, prior to the pandemic, insurance companies reimbursed mental health providers far less for virtual appointments than they did for inpatient appointments. So mostly they just didn’t happen. and the federal government, because of push from advocates, changed that. And that’s why we had telehealth behavioral health during the pandemic. But some states did not make it continue or have it continue or vote to continue it. So, in our state, we succeeded in making sure that that continued and that’s something you have to think about as people move away or go to colleges, other places, or whatever. It’s different rules, in different states on the state level.
Most NAMIS have a state advocacy day at their legislature and list priority bills for the session and do advocacy work on talking to legislators about that. I’ve personally testified at the state house about some insurance reforms that were successful here in our state. Our state is working to add structural supports in schools for mental health providers. we have more mental health specialty courts growing in our state, and a lot of hospitals are turning towards working on health equity for mental health for underserved populations. So that’s all a part of keeping the conversation going and keeping in touch with the legislators, very locally.
I remember in November 2020, the first time I did a webinar. We all got good at that, and it was all planned to be in person in September. But, our mental health system, a local view is what we call it. So, we invited hospital staff and clinicians and stakeholders and local police and school representatives, and we just talked about how the system was working and not working. And, we had a local legislator be our moderator, and that was brought down to the substance use and mental health committee, down at the state legislature. So, there are things you can do to make people pay attention.
Candida Fink: Right.
Lori Krinski: It’s a long, long road, though. It’s very challenging. The average time for a bill to pass is eight years. So got to keep to the grindstone.
Candida Fink: Got to be patient. You’ve got to be willing to wait out successes and failures. Right. Like, when it doesn’t go through.
Jo-Ann Berry: Right. Well, and knowing that ahead of time, it’s like the first time out or even the second and third time, probably not. Just knowing that, I think, would help people keep it going, because if you think it’s going to pass in one and be like, well, that failed.
Lori Krinski: Oh, well, right. You can’t give up, and that’s hard.
Candida Fink: You wouldn’t get discouraged.
Jo-Ann Berry: Right. Yeah. But knowing that it’s going to be a multiyear effort can help.
Lori Krinski: Very true, and people are nervous about doing it. Why don’t I call my representative? I’m like, that’s their job. They want you to come talk to them. They really do. They have office hours and assistants and yes, just talk to them. They will listen. That’s what they’re there for. They want people to engage your local town, everything wants you to engage. They want more people engaged. Talk to them.
Jo-Ann Berry: And the other thing which I, remind people of periodically is they work for you. You don’t work for them, they work for you. And if you have something they need to know, you should tell them.
Lori Krinski: Right.
Candida Fink: Very simple, encouraging that kind of local involvement at any level. But for people especially, who are just sort of starting with this idea and trying to sort of, get involved and having a group or having people to do it with to teach you, to support you, I think that helps.
Lori Krinski: And they make it very easy. They’ll send out national or state level, opportunities, advocacy alerts, they call it. So, in many instances, there are some prewritten paragraphs, and you can change them if you don’t like them. And then there’s a section to add your comment here or add your story here or whatever. So, they make it easy for you to get involved. And a lot of the programming on the platforms just automatically picks out your legislators and sends it to them.
Candida Fink: Right. You don’t have to go look it up. And I think it’s important what you said at the beginning, too for people to understand that there are all of these opportunities and resources. When you and your family are going through a crisis, you barely have the time to sort of just get through everything. As you discussed at the beginning, you weren’t, volunteering and sort of a part of this organization at that level. And that it’s okay. Just getting through, just surviving is what it’s about in the beginning. Making yourself availing yourself of these resources is huge. To be around other people who, the lived experience, the shared experience, people who understand people who have ideas or thoughts or just to sit with and be with you, I think that can be very powerful even in the midst of crisis. If you can find your way, and that’s okay. Then as things resolve, or get better and you have some more resources yourself, internal resources, then you can come back to give back. And I think that your journey and your story show that.
Lori Krinski: Right. And I appreciate that. I mean, we do need to have an opportunity here and take a moment to know if NAMI has touched you or if you wish you would have been touched by maybe raise your hand and be part of our community and spend some time helping others. It’s unbelievably rewarding. Teaching these classes and getting in touch with people and helping them through this week, last week, or five months or years.
Candida Fink: That’s right.
Lori Krinski: People are involved for a long time. I think our NAMI walks coordinator has been doing it for 17 years now or something like that.
Candida Fink: Really? That’s amazing.
Lori Krinski: He could use some assistants who are under 50.
Candida Fink: Well, that’s bringing in young people, right?
Lori Krinski: That’s what we need.
Candida Fink: And I think there’s an energy, right, with young people or the sort of Gen Z like in social media, there’s an energy around sort of destigmatizing mental illness. so bringing them into legacy organizations like NAMI I think, is because the infrastructure is in place, and to help them feel comfortable bringing them into such a setting, that’s powerful – the energy of youth.
Lori Krinski: They are in, like you said, a new environment where the stigma is falling away. So, they are oftentimes wiling to talk about it. And getting somebody over that hump 20 years ago was almost impossible.
Jo-Ann Berry: That’s right.
Lori Krinski: Makes a big difference.
Candida Fink: Yeah, well, I think there’s a lot of demonization of social media, and there’s plenty that’s awful and scary and terrible about it. And also, at the same time, things like accessing other people like yourself, and places to share and communicate have been very positive. Just a place to share and speak about mental health struggles and be open about them. I think that has evolved in a way that could never have happened. As you said, Lori, like 20 years ago, who did you talk to? You didn’t know. But now there are people all over the country who will come to that same space – all over the world, really. So, I think it can be very powerful in that way. I worry about the demonization and just, like, shut down all social media for children, and it’s like, all of it careful, judicious, wise use. But I think, anyway, that’s another conversation. Another conversation entirely. But I think tying that into sort of how you guys are growing, too, and sort of all the virtual stuff that you’re doing, accessibility that has increased for you and all of the organizations at all three levels, I think that’s powerful, too.
Lori Krinski: All right, should we drill down on, specifics? For some of the programs.
Jo-Ann Berry: Sure. This seems like a good time for that.
Lori Krinski: Okay. So, I’ve been defining it by, assuming the audience is primarily parents with teens or young adults with mental health conditions. I do want to remind everybody that these are free and many of them are online. The first one is the family support groups. and again, those are with facilitators who’ve been there. They’re trained by NAMI and our support groups are drop-in, which means you don’t have to register or commit to six of them or whatever. You can go when you want, and you can share, or you can just listen. And we occasionally get approached by hospitals or other organizations and like, well, so what are your demographics? And people can come to our support group and give a fake name. Okay. We don’t keep that stuff.
Candida Fink: Right. It’s very anonymous.
Lori Krinski: Right. It’s fine. I know kind of how many people are coming to my support groups, but we don’t ask any questions. You are open to just do what’s comfortable for you, and you can go to one or two or a different one or go for four weeks or whatever works for you is fine. The family-to-family classes are a little bit more structured. Again, those are people who have had the journey. This experience really opens up the opportunity to have open conversations and mutual support in a completely stigma free environment. It allows people to say things they don’t want to say out loud to their neighbors or share surprising things that they never thought would they talk about or have happened to them with other people who are like, yeah. And one of the kind of surprising things that happens in family to family is a lot of laughing, and release because we’re trying to get through it. I’ve had many people come up to me, and we’ll be doing a canopy at an outdoor event with a table, information table, and they’ll just come running over and go, I took that family class, I don’t know, 15 years ago. Changed my life. Changed my life.
Candida Fink: Great.
Lori Krinski: All the time. So, in some of the topics in that class, you learn about different mental health conditions and different treatments and therapies. They go over some national, state, and then there’s that local resources thing that’s very important. and people always want information on that, but it focuses mostly on trying to work together as a family. So, they talk about listening skills and communication techniques, problem-solving, managing crisis and relapse, limit setting, and a lot of it is listening to your person. You can’t walk in this with a clipboard and fix it. And many, many people do that. I did that too, because it’s not something that you’re going to fix in a weekend, with a to-do list. It’s a long process.
Jo-Ann Berry: Or back to your point of I need help with my shoulder when you go to physical therapy for four months or something, and it’s much better.
Lori Krinski: This is different, right?
Candida Fink: That perspective shift is huge. Probably one of the most fundamental things about that work that certainly my families who have gone through it, I think that sense of we’re in the problem-solving component, shifting that understanding, we’re just going to fix it. And the listening, listening and believing your person is big.
Lori Krinski: Coping skills, and self-care stuff too. So, these are officially evidence-based courses, which means they’ve been tested, by psychiatrists to see that there is a change in people’s abilities or cognitive thoughts about their ability to work forward. There are weekly programs, they have eight sessions and you do have to register for these, and we want you to go through the whole thing and not just skip out. Most of the time they used to just be available in spring and fall in my state, but now with Zoom, one might start in January, because we don’t have to worry about that drive problem. So, they’re more available than previously and easier to get to. The other class specifically for parents of adolescents or young adults is called Basics – for adolescents, children, and adolescents. So that’s for families with younger, students or children.
It works very similar to the family-to-family class, but there’s some information there about working with the schools, which is also a whole new round, and a lot of paperwork and a lot of pushing. It takes a long time, and you can raise your hand and say crisis and they’ll get that meeting scheduled in about four months. And it’s a lot of federal bureaucracy. It’s a big deal. It’s hard, but very important to learn about. And there are some specialists you can hire to help you with that stuff these days as well. One other point about the family support groups that I forgot to note, with the advent of the Zoom situation, we’ve been able to have them a little bit more specialized. So, within our state, we have parent and family support for parents of people this age and people that age and people that age, so it can specialize a little bit. Because talking about a twelve-year-old is a lot different than talking about a 30-year-old. So, Zoom has helped us specialize those at least in our state.
Candida Fink: Nice.
Lori Krinski: And then, one of the other programs that is not available everywhere, but is quite available across the country is called Ending the Silence. And that is a program that goes into schools, and these go into classrooms, usually, junior high or early high school. And it encourages people to talk about mental health, to recognize what’s going on in the kids sitting next to you as a teacher or a student or just within the school population and bring it up and ask questions and go ahead and say, how are you feeling? What’s going on? You can share with me. So that’s part of breaking down that stigma, as well. And, then a new program that started at the end of 2023 – NAMI has always had the helpline for a very long time, but now when you call that number, you can select, I think it’s one, to get transferred to the NAMI teen and young adult helpline. So those are young adults specifically there to talk to someone, who is in that same, again, the empathy thing. I’m going to talk to someone who’s in my same headspace. But they are working off of a giant directory that they put together. So, they’re offering up resources and information to folks.
There are articles, webinars, and resource lists around topics like accommodations at school, coping skills, crisis options, first episode, psychosis, grief support, relationships, talking about mental health, self-care, and social media. That one’s on there too, of course. And then they have all sorts of topics on the very specific diagnosis and resources pertinent to specific in a wide variety of cultural communities as well. And that’s a big recognition, that we need to approach things from that viewpoint too. The other resource for young adults is NAMI’s mental health college guide. That used to be a PDF a while back, but now it’s an online, exploration kind of opportunity, and it covers things like you got to talk about disclosing your diagnosis. Who are you going to tell that about? Nobody. Everybody. You have to think about that. And it’s good to think about those things before you get there.
You need to come up with a family communication plan. Okay. I told my son, all my kids, Sundays call your mom day. It’s international, call your mom day. But with a mental health condition, you need to open up communications about some of that other stuff too. So, it’s good to talk about how we’re going to figure that out. it’s very important to learn that there are privacy laws around adult students. You can call the high school and say I want to know, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you call the college, they’re not going to tell you anything. Communicating with the support service offices there is important to find out what kind of support they have and what kind of support they don’t have.
You can’t go to college and have the college support service be your therapist. That’s just not how it works. They’re not going to pay for it, they’re not going to be available for you. You have to set up two things and now telehealth is available. That’s easier. We used to have to tell people to find somebody locally, but you have to watch out for the different state thing if that’s a concern. So, you have to check with your insurance company. Managing a daily college schedule – that can be different for people who need mental health breaks during the day. Think about what you need for yourself. Where will you take time for yourself? Do you need to plan exercise and movement for yourself to make yourself feel better? Planning all sorts of kind of self-care options is important to think about before you get there.
And locally we have a yearly, we’ve done this for about twelve years now, I think, and we just call it College and Your Mental Health. We used to go from high school to high school within our area. But now of course it’s a webinar. The good thing about webinars is in the situation when it was in person, parents would come, students not so much. And we really wanted the high school counselors to come so that we wouldn’t have to have this class anymore because they would be able to share the information. So, now that it’s a webinar environment where you can’t see your face, lots more people are comfortable, to join in. So, we’ve been trying to push getting more and more students to come to it because it’s “nothing about me without me.” So, they’re welcome to come too. We’re having our next one on March 18 at 07:00 p.m. We can certainly have everybody come, to a webinar so we can offer up information on that, in all the details that they’re going to put on the website.
Jo-Ann Berry: This is amazing. What you were saying about all of the resources on the college, and transitioning to college, these are the things to think about. Our previous guest we were talking about actually works at a college, and a lot of students are resistant to accommodations, or they want all the accommodations. So, figuring out what helped you be successful in high school – what were the accommodations and supports that helped you? And some of them can transfer to college and some of them won’t.
Lori Krinski: Correct.
Jo-Ann Berry: So, figuring that out, and then if you need that extra support, how are you going to find it? Whether I can’t even think of anything off the top of my head, but something that maybe scribing, for example, might have been available in high school. So, you might have to hire somebody to be your scribe or find a good friend. I don’t know that that’s something you need along with the exercise, the time.
Lori Krinski: Right. It’s just a very different environment and your assumptions that your IEP follows you exactly. And it’s just not going to happen. And it is an environment where you are expected to take care of your own problems. And that it goes from just prepping for doing your laundry or getting your medication. You need to practice all that stuff so that it’s not all overwhelming once you get there. Because with the mental health condition, you do have this other pile of stuff you have to put in your day that you have to manage. So thinking about that ahead of time.
At our event, we have college administrators, from three different levels of nearby colleges: a community college, a state college, and a private university. And then we have one or two, depending on who’s available student who are in college now and living with mental health challenges, and they talk about their situation. We also talk about what if that doesn’t work out. You go for two semesters and it’s just too hard. Let’s make a new plan. And the plan doesn’t have to be linear. That’s not a linear life. There are so many things and different options to swirl around, and you have to get over that.
Candida Fink: It’s a big one, though. It’s a big one.
Lori Krinski: It is.
Candida Fink: I’m behind. I’ll be behind. This is the picture of what that is. And for families and students, this is the plan I expected. And there’s a grief process of, letting go of the story you expected. Right. So, there’s so much work to be done in that. Also, it’s so powerful when you can come to that decision and take steps that you need to do as a student and the family supporting the student to do what works for you and to write your story in the way that works for you. But it’s a huge shift for many, many families.
Lori Krinski: It’s very hard. And that’s what’s so inspiring about most of our peer speakers on the college program because they came to that personal conclusion and said, you know what? I got to take care of myself first.
Candida Fink: That’s right.
Lori Krinski: And this is what I need for me right now. And parents, you have to work with me.
Candida Fink: Right. You have to believe me when I say what I need. And look, families, they’re different. It’s that conversation. And how wonderful to have students with lived experience, students involved in that webinar. That’s huge. That’s huge. I think,
Lori Krinski: Yeah, well, that sums up our giant list of resources. I think it is a giant.
Jo-Ann Berry: Well, I think one of the things that, for me, noticing is, like, you can dip your toe in a little bit if you find yourself in need of one of these resources, and maybe that’s it. Or maybe you need to go to that group every single week because of whatever it is that you experience from this. But the range of resources is so broad, I think, and accessible. One of the great things that a lot of groups have found with Zoom. we’re on Zoom right now.
Candida Fink: That’s right.
Jo-Ann Berry: Which has opened up so many opportunities on so many levels for, maintaining anonymity, if you want to, or just not having to worry about driving at night or in the snow or all of those things, I think has helped. I haven’t said too much this time, but I am nodding my head constantly, which people can’t see.
Candida Fink: Jo-Ann and I are both. Yes, shake head, shaking, trying to be quiet, not say a lot while you list the resources. But we are agreeing strongly.
Jo-Ann Berry: Right. For our audience, building that School family connection, has come up in so many different ways with many of our guests. This just further emphasizes that we’re all on the same team we hope helping our students to be their best and do their best. And it’s not a straight-line journey.
Candida Fink: Not at all.
Jo-Ann Berry: There are going to be ups and downs, zigs and zags, and that’s okay. but let’s support one another as best we can.
Candida Fink: And I think helping the helpers, supporting the school staff, like the school social workers, the teachers, as many people that we can engage who are running into providers. Right. Because I think a lot of us providers don’t know about all of these resources. I think we could all learn from it, but helping everyone learn, especially people who are in the school building with young people
Educating the people around, even beyond the sort of family unit, is so helpful, so helpful at all those pillars, education, advocacy, and support. Right. Those are the three pillars to help people be aware, who do you encounter and come in contact with and are going to need to support young people and their families?
Lori Krinski: I guess my concluding comment would be the pandemic has opened us up, to talk about mental health. And that’s amazing. And the recognition that you can see on social media or everywhere of awareness around mental health is really good. But NAMI would like to balance that by a recognition of how mental wellness is different than living with a long-term serious mental health condition. We need to recognize that we need mental health for all along the whole spectrum there.
Jo-Ann Berry: Right.
Lori Krinski: And that’s a big part of Nami’s mission.
Candida Fink: Yes, that makes sense. That sort of universal idea of how we help support people’s mental health. Right. And also, the story of serious mental illness and living with that and managing that. But there are different levels of intervention.
Lori Krinski: And support, it’s different than a yoga class, which is way different.
Candida Fink: Yoga is great. Yoga is great.
Lori Krinski: Yoga is good. I love yoga.
Candida Fink: Yoga is excellent. I do find, in my last comment, I find a lot of my families and teenagers will say, I tell people I’m depressed, and they tell me to do yoga. They don’t understand what I’m dealing with. Yoga is not going to fix this. We love a good yoga class, and we talk about it, but it is a separate thing, and it can feel a little diminishing to people living with serious challenges.
Lori Krinski: Right. So, you have to keep verbalizing and keep listening, and yoga could potentially be the best self-care that you’ll do for a whole rest of your life. But depending on the symptom level, you need more attention.
Candida Fink: Exactly. You may need much more at that point. All right, any other closing thoughts? Jo?
Jo-Ann Berry: this has been super informative, for me, and I hope for our listeners, and as I said, we’ll link the sites and things that Lori has mentioned in the show notes. So, you can just go right there and click through. And hopefully, some of our listeners will participate in the March 18 program, which will not be recorded. Lori and I talked about this earlier. It is not recorded, so tune in if you can be live. And if you miss it, then there may be another one coming up, at some time, perhaps, probably not right away, but that’s a thing to be on the lookout for. If you have family members or you are thinking about college and, what you need to think about, the things that you don’t know, you don’t know.
Candida Fink: I think part of that’s a great way to put that.
Jo-Ann Berry: So. Yes. Thanks so much, Lori, for spending time with us and, helping us put this resource out into really, into the world, wherever. But it sounds like, NAMI is taking full advantage of our changing world and getting more resources out to people. So, yay. And we’ll try to help do that as well.
Candida Fink: Spread the word.
Lori Krinski: Spread the word.
Candida Fink: Great.
Lori Krinski: Thank you.