What is NAMI Provider Education?
The NAMI Provider Education Program is a
10-week course that presents a penetrating, subjective view of family and
consumer experiences with serious mental illness to line staff at public
agencies who work directly with people with severe and persistent mental
illnesses.
The course helps providers realize the
hardships that families and consumers face and appreciate the courage and
persistence it takes to live with and recover from mental illness.
How is the Provider Education
course unique?
The Provider Course emphasizes the
involvement of consumers and family members as faculty in provider-staff
training. The teaching team consists of five
people:
Few teaching programs employ consumers
in this kind of sustained training effort in which they are paid to
participate on a teaching team as they present a 10-week course.
The course reflects a new knowledge base
-- the “lived experiences” of people coping with a mental illness or
caring for someone who lives with a mental illness. Including
this deeply personal perspective creates an appreciable difference in the
program’s content. It adds a means of
teaching the emotional aspects and practical consequences of these
illnesses to the academic medical information in the course.
Where is the Provider course
available?
The NAMI Provider Education course is
currently being taught in 20 states and the
District of Columbia
.
Participating states include: Alabama,
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Minnesota (Olmsted Co.), Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New
York (Rochester), Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia
(Arlington Co.), and Wisconsin.
The Provider program is also available
in the Canadian province
of Ontario, and the program’s recent expansion has been sponsored
exclusively by Magellan Health Services.
