TREATMENT of mental illness

Keshet, a course for family members of persons’ coping with mental illness, was developed to enhance positive family cognitive communication skills. Improving communication with the use of mediation techniques, primarily used by therapists, creates a learning environment viewed as a strategy of Knowledge Translation. To examine the effectiveness of Keshet in improving attitudes, problem solving, communication skills and attenuation of burden a quasi-experimental research design was applied with study and control condition.

Background: Carers are family members or friends who support people with a mental health problem without being paid. Carer involvement in mental health treatment has been consistently supported by research evidence and promoted by policies but its implementation rates are poor. Particularly when patients are treated in inpatient units, carers often report being left without information or being excluded from decisions about treatment.

Psycho education to family members has been emerged as an important prerequisite to modern psychiatric treatment and rehabilitation, since through psycho education many problematic areas related to patient care and compliance with the treatment can be successfully addressed. Being an indispensable adjunct to modern psychiatric treatment it is more efficacious in targeting all areas of patient's illness and functionality quite suitably than any single therapy based approach. Effects of bipolar disorder can be far-reaching, both into the lives of patients and those around them.