Encouraging your relatives independence

There is growing evidence from research that if a person with severe mental illness regains enough stability to manage their illness alone or by sharing responsibility for care and treatment with their key care coordinator, living independently of their supportive family can be helpful.
For someone who has felt so powerless in the face of frightening symptoms, the decision to live independently can be momentous.

It involves starting to take everyday risks that have previously been found as overwhelming - for this reason any move towards independence needs to be done gradually. Recovery involves mastery of skills a little at a time and the same step-by-step approach may be needed in regaining social independence.

Mental health professionals increasingly encourage people recovering from mental illness to take small steps, in order to help them begin to set short and long-term goals. Achieveing goals will gradually help towards rebuilding self esteem, and allow people to effectively manage their anxiety in order to be able to regain some control over their life.

Knowing when and how to let go

As your relatives recovery progresses, this will continue to need care and support from their family and carer, but it is important to understand and be comfortable with the situation when the time comes whenthey no longer need you to care for them.

This is probably the time to start trying to step back and let go. The family carer, knowing how dramatically and painfully things can go wrong, will almost certainly continue to worry - they know how vulnerable their relative is and how harsh the world outside can be to those with mental illness. You also know that professional help is not always available or sufficient to meet their relatives needs, and so your urge to protect will still be there, but you can begin to change the ways that it is shown...

  • try to spend less time with the recovering person, as this lets them have time and space to get to grips with their new status in their own way
    try not to constantly worry about what your relative is doing or how they are managing - this can lead to too many checking-up calls which may knock your relatives confidence that you think they can manage
  • offer to work alongside your relative to achieve goals that they have set - but be accepting when there may be certain things that they would like to do on their own
  • help your relative to make decisions if they seek support in this way
    support their choices wherever safe to do so, even if you personally have doubts
  • be available to support them on a regular basis if needed, but at a regular time chosen by both of you, so that it does not encroach upon the other's independent time

If as a carer you respond to every call for help on demand, no independence will be achieved by either of you.