The National Alliance on Mental Illness Butler County chapter is beginning its fall educational sessions, with its Family-to-Family group starting Sept. 10 and its Peer-to-Peer group starting Sept. 29.

On Thursday, Sept. 4, NAMI’s leaders and volunteers met with representatives of other Butler-based nonprofits and community groups, to find ways the groups could help one another in the coming months. Aside from NAMI, organizations represented at the session Thursday included the ARC of Butler County, Slippery Rock University’s Office for Community Engagement and Charlie Health.

The Community Voices session was just one of many organized by Josette Skobieranda Dau, associate director of community impact and partnerships at SRU. She organizes these sessions about once a month to help connect agency personnel with one another, creating a network of support that helps people know where to go for any situation.

“Informal networking — that's kind of the cornerstone for it,” Skobieranda Dau said. “Some of it is raising awareness of opportunities that benefit people in Butler County.”

The session allowed NAMI volunteers to speak about their upcoming programs, as well as the circumstances that led them to where they are and how they came to be affiliated with the alliance.

Linda Schmitmeyer, a NAMI-certified leader of its Family-to-Family classes, shared the story not only of how she learned about the organization, but how she became involved with it to the point where she now facilitates group sessions.

“It has been 30 years since my husband was hospitalized for a month,” Schmitmeyer said. “He was at an engineering convention in Detroit and he had a breakdown and spent that month in the hospital. That was when I came to know NAMI.”

NAMI offers several support groups meant to cover different needs relating to mental health and people with loved ones experiencing mental health emergencies.

Donna Lamison, executive director of NAMI Butler County, said Thursday that the support groups are led by NAMI staff or certified volunteers, who facilitate the classes based on lived experience. The group sessions are not meant to be medical advice, but just help from people who have experienced similar situations or feelings, she said.

“We don't take the place of therapists, counselors. We teach from lived experience,” Lamison said, “living with a loved one that has mental health issues or living with our own mental health issues and practicing recovery.”

Nathan Lazaroff, program/media and marketing coordinator of NAMI Butler County, leads the organization’s Peer-to-Peer group sessions, which are meant for people going through their own mental health struggles. He said the people who attend these sessions vary greatly in where they are in their mental health recovery journey, which actually helps create a supportive environment.

Lazaroff also leads the Connections group and said these sessions give regular attendees a reason to get out of the house, which, alone, can be an accomplishment for someone experiencing debilitating mental health troubles. He said as the sessions go on, people share small victories with one another, like starting a new hobby or meeting someone new.

“These programs change lives,” Lazaroff said. “That's why I like it.”

He added that while people are invited to share their own stories at the groups he leads, he also gives advice on how to handle communication in a way that addresses a person’s own feelings.

“It's way easier to tell someone, 'I feel this when this happens,' just as an example,” Lazaroff said.

The Family-to-Family classes, led by Schmitmeyer, are mainly for family members and friends of people with mental illness.

Schmitmeyer said these classes allow people to talk about the ways another person’s mental illness has affected their lives and she uses her own experience to guide them through their feelings. One of the best aspects of this class and the Peer-to-Peer sessions is to “give you the feeling that you are not alone,” Schmitmeyer said.

“I felt like it took all the personal chaos from the previous years and gave me focus,” she said of when she first joined a family support group. “This isn't about personal chaos. This isn't about a relationship. This is about an illness. And once you kind of embrace that, you take a big step.”

Lamison said these groups are not meant to “fix” their attendees, but provide them with skills and words that can help them process their own feelings and cope in times of crisis.

“It teaches increased understanding and advocacy skills, how they can advocate for their loved ones and in-depth treatments — diagnoses, all of those things,” Lamison said.

Lamison announced at the Thursday Community Voices session that NAMI is training volunteers with PFLAG Butler, a recently established LGBT advocacy group, to lead support groups for people who identify as LGBT.

PFLAG Butler aims to start these support groups in October, Lamison said, and its volunteers wanted to be prepared.

“They came to us because they are just getting underway and they wanted to start some support groups for their folks,” Lamison said. “They wanted to meet standards of excellence, so they came to NAMI for the training for their support groups.”

Lamison also said the alliance will begin a support group in the winter for people struggling with feelings of mental anguish over the holiday season — a time that can be especially stressful for some.

“Last year we initiated a session during the holidays because we find that that's when those with any kind of mental health issue, it tends to get worse,” Lamison said.

NAMI’s support groups begin three times a year — in the spring, the fall and the winter — to give people the opportunity to join at a time that works for them. Lamison also said the groups take place in different locations in the county, including Butler, Zelienople, Slippery Rock and Evans City. There is also a virtual support group.

Schmitmeyer said these groups can be productive for people, even those who think there is no escape from their negative feelings.

“I wanted people to understand that mental illness is an illness and you can recover from it,” Schmitmeyer said. “You don't recover to the life you had, but you do recover to a life that's very good.”

Despite the challenges Schmitmeyer and her husband faced decades ago, they weren’t enough to end their marriage.

“We are still married. We celebrate 50 years of marriage at the end of this year. We navigated it,” Schmitmeyer said. “I couldn't be in a better space than where we are now.”

Family-to-Family is a free, eight-session education program, and registration is open now for sessions beginning Wednesday, Sept. 10. Peer-to-Peer is a free, eight-session recovery-focused course and registration is open for its sessions, which begin Sept. 29.

For more information on NAMI and its support groups, visit the Butler County chapter’s website at namibutler.org.