Parents and caregivers of youth who are struggling with mental health or substance use issues have a new place to find support. The South Cariboo Canadian Mental Health Association is offering a new support group called Take a Break, aimed at helping parents and caregivers learn strategies to deal with the stress that comes from caring for struggling youth.
Kathy Provost, a community health worker with CMHA and the group facilitator, says parents and caregivers can include mothers, fathers, foster parents, grandparents or anyone caring for a youth up to age 25 who is struggling with substance abuse or mental illness ranging from anxiety or depression to schizophrenia.
The first topic the group will deal with is self-care, she says. "When you are a parent with a child with any problem you put yourself last. You are spending hours and hours and hours looking after their needs. When that happens your own needs get pushed to the bottom, so you can start suffering from anxiety, depression, just verging on becoming mentally ill yourself when you don't have someone to help you and give you the information you need to support yourself."
The support group will also cover topics like mental health, wellness, constructive communication, and setting boundaries as well as how to ask for help and set goals. "It gives [caregivers] peace of mind. It gives them the education and skills for dealing with the hard things that they are dealing with in their life because of their children," says Provost.
While Provost herself has the training and information to assist parents and caregivers, she says it's also about the support they can receive from each other. "When they get in a group with people who share the same issues and hardships that they are going through, they develop a camaraderie where they are not just forming new relationships with people but they are learning and sharing with each other all the time."
Reactions from the first meeting were positive, says Provost. She hopes more people will join throughout the year.
Currently, the group is scheduled to meet every second Thursday from 9-11 a.m. at the CMHA building. Provost says the time may change depending on when people are able to attend. The next meeting will take place Thursday, Jan. 26.
Those interested in the support group are welcome to register at any time by calling Provost or the CMHA at 250-395-4883. Provost says she conducts a short interview with new participants to connect with and welcome them as well as make sure they fall into the project criteria.
Members also sign a confidentiality agreement to make sure everyone can be comfortable speaking freely, says Provost.
"There are a lot of people with mental illness everywhere. We are trying to break the stigma of people feeling alienated and not wanting to disclose that they have children that have [a] mental illness," says Provost. "There are people of all ages that are suffering from mental illness all over the province so the more programs we have to help that out the better."
Provost attended a training in Kelowna to learn to facilitate the group. She says she wants to emulate what she saw at a group she attended there: "I was just really taken by how important these meetings were to these caregivers – so much so that they would book time off to go," she says. "It was so valuable."