National Alliance on Mental Illness NKY
If you had not lived it, you wouldn’t believe Norma’s story. She came to NAMI eight years ago as a client. She and her husband had raised their own daughters, then a young man with cystic fibrosis.
Just when they felt they might enjoy middle age, enter her widowed brother with PTSD, a drug addicted 20-year-old nephew Cary with pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend Stephanie and toddler in tow — and nobody to help them.
Cary was arrested for drug trafficking on the day his child was born. A few days later the new mother Stephanie went to see him in jail and she was arrested, too. With no one to care for the babies, Norma stepped in to keep them from going into the foster care system.
“We took custody of the children – including the mother of the two little ones, since she was under age. We soon learned we were dealing with second-generation mental illness in the babies.
“It’s a horrible, horrible thing to be caught up in mental illness and drugs. We were always people who stayed within the lines. All of a sudden I was in emergency rooms and mental illness facilities. Both children had run-ins with the police and both eventually required residential care in facilities found only in other states. It is heart wrenching to see your 12-year-old being taken away at 5 a.m. in blocking casts to keep him from running away. We followed behind to Missouri where he stayed for 1 1/2 years.
The younger sister was in a 90-day outdoor program in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then she went to Asheville Academy for girls for more than a year. It cost lots of money to care for these children. Kentucky does not cover such expenses so we paid out of pocket. Each residential facility cost about $100,000. We paid for all of that ourselves.”
“For 17 years, we have raised both children. Both live on their own now and both have jobs in fast-food restaurants.”
Norma has continued with NAMI NKY as a trained volunteer group leader and started an additional support group for parents of children under age 17 – FoCAS. A lot of the content in the FoCAS program is about support services that are available for these kids. States are required to provide certain services but parents seldom know how to access those items.
Thanks to donors, NAMI NKY with its one paid part-time director and a small group of trained volunteers assist those dealing with mental illness, caregivers, family and friends from the eight counties in Northern Kentucky.
When someone encounters the high stress of mental illness in their family they can join a support group at NAMI and find help and a welcoming circle of those who have been there, too. There is never a fee for this service.
Donations large and small keep NAMI NKY on the front lines of this battle with mental illness and the toll it takes on the family, friends and caregivers as well as the patient suffering with mental illness.
