My biggest supporters would be my family and friends and my doctor too. They check on me and are very understanding. My sister moved to live with me to help me, that’s probably the biggest example of how I’ve had support.

I would say my husband, my son’s father, has been my biggest supporter. We’ve been each other’s biggest support, because we are there day in and day out through this whole journey of schizophrenia diagnosis, and we see how it’s affecting and impacting our child and to know that everything your child is going through, you feel it. You feel their pain, and you just want them to be happy and healthy. Having my husband, my spouse, there for support, to be the strong one when I’m weak, or vice versa, for me to be the strong one when he’s feeling weak, and to support each other’s decisions, especially when we know that we must call the police or have our son committed, just knowing that we have each other’s back and that we support the decisions that we know is going to be best for our son in the longterm.

Well I would consider my parents my biggest supporters, but they were big supporters. But then as far as too much into what I may be or become, they would sort of get a little on edge, when I start taking too much about too far in what I may or may not be. But as far the problem itself, and keeping me in line or helping me through the bottoms of troubles with it, they were the best supporters of all. Then of course the doctors and the nurses more or less knew what to do for me. So they were supporters in ways where they made things more like what they should be. They sort of help me turn things into more what life should be rather than what I was living like before.

My biggest supporters have been friends, and I met these friends through NAMI, which is the National Alliance of Mental Illness. For example, I have a daughter that gave birth to her second set of twins, and I had to leave Texas and go to Seattle to assist her and help her and her boyfriend. And so I had to leave my son, which he’s not actually capable of being left for two and a half weeks on his own. And so, I had a good friend of mine that actually came over every other day. She brought him food. She brought her dog. So, he can actually have something to comfort him in a sense. She took him to the store. She was wonderful. And I have family, but my family chose not to do this. So, I have several friends who have been very supportive of myself and my son with his illness, and this journey that we’ve been on.

My biggest supporters are my family, my doctor, and they have supported me by listening to me and having compassion for me and watching over-

For most of my journey, my therapist has been my biggest supporter. She’s worked with me for five years. And she’s stuck with me through hospitalizations and sessions where I didn’t talk, as well as times where my illness spoke more than I did. Meaning that I really spoke out of a place of anger or fear or angst rather than the way I truly felt about the situation or even how I felt about her. So her persistence and consistency has been super important and super healing for me. My current psychiatrist has also been a big supporter and really helpful. And unlike past doctors, I feel like he really values my opinion. And so he asks me how I feel about medication and the direction of my treatment. And so I feel like I’m being given an active role in my treatment. And am able to be an advocate for myself and play a part in what’s going on in my treatment. And that’s really important to me. And my family has never really understood my disorder and they still really don’t. But recently they’ve decided to try in our own way to be supportive. And so for them, this looks like helping me with small tasks that help reduce my stress. Doing things for me that just takes something off my plate or checking in with me if I haven’t reached out to them in a while. And those are ways that I’ve been supported by my family, even though they don’t quite understand my disorder.

I would have to say the biggest supporters are our whole family. [PII redacted] is one of four children. So his siblings help us a lot or they like to visit with him when he comes over, which I think [PII redacted] enjoys because he really doesn’t have any other friends. Some family is about it for him. And I believe he enjoys coming over once a week, but he can only tolerate us for so long before he’s ready to go back as well. My husband is a huge supporter. He helps it when I can’t take anymore. And I help him when he can’t take anymore. So we kind of counteract each other, which is a big help and [PII redacted] listens to him better than me, which maybe it’s a man thing. I don’t know. But yeah, I would have to say just our family in general, my daughter, my sons, and my husband.

Well, the only really real good support is the National Alliance for Mental Illness. I mean, they saved our lives. Their class, Family to Family, their support groups. I became active in the organization. I’ve been president at every level, including national. And the involvement in that organization is where all the support comes from. Nobody else can understand, except other people like them. Family, not really, not all that useful and times, really just a negative, especially at the beginning. And friends, they don’t really get it, except my best friends are NAMI people. They’re people I’ve met through NAMI and from them, I get support. I can call my NAMI friends and we’re really good friends. Without the National Alliance for Mental Illness and the friendships we’ve developed there, I don’t think we could have survived this by any means. And we certainly wouldn’t have been there for him. That’s the biggest support and it’s really immense support.

Next to God, my biggest supporters in my son’s disorder are his twin sisters, that being my daughters. How they go about dealing with the situation is that they pretend and let him think and believe that he is normal. If he says something that doesn’t seem logical, they won’t question him, but they would just try to go along with it. They don’t mock him, they don’t make fun of him. They try to be understanding. My twins are 13 years old, and they have been my biggest supporters when it comes to my son’s mental disorder.

My girlfriend has been my biggest supporter. She always calms me down when I have an episode. Even when I wake up in the night and see lizards or something, she consoles me and assures me that nothing’s there. My doctor is fairly supportive, but my biggest support is my girlfriend.

My biggest supporter when it comes to my condition is definitely my mother. She has been with me through this journey and supports me in whatever treatment that I decide to go through.

The people that have supported me so far in the journey that I’ve went through is my doctor and my wonderful husband of 14 years and the service animals I do have in my home that have been supporting me and my little puppy that passed away, God rest her soul and my husband’s mother that had passed away. Those have been the biggest supporters in my life.

My mom is my biggest supporter. She assists me in going in public when I need groceries or clothing or other outings.

The people who … My biggest supporters are probably my mom, she’s the number one; and then I have a couple of friends and a cousin. The main way that my friends have and my cousin have treated me is that they treat me the same; even though I have this illness, they don’t give up on me. They treat me the same as they would if I didn’t have this illness. My mom was there for me when I was going in and out of the hospital. She took me to Community Mental Health. She was really right there by my side through everything when it first started, which was going to the hospital quite a few times, just kind of losing my mind a couple times. She never gave up on me.

I believe I am probably my best supporter because I’m the one dealing with the schizophrenia and the condition. And along with this journey and every day activity and tasks I do, I pick up things that I seem to like and do less of things that I don’t like. And I’m able to remain somewhat stable in the condition. And my supporter family members are there, but they are mainly there just to make sure I took my medication. And I don’t think it’s always about the medication, I think it’s around… It also has to do with the environment and the living situation.

My biggest supporter has been my family. I’ve been able to talk to them and they’ve been encouraging to both my husband and I. Just whether it be a nice card or a text in the morning letting us know that they’re thinking about us and praying for us. And just being there for us, like when helping with the kids or just trying to get my husband a gift card to maybe go and do something or just things like that to help get him out of the house and just make him feel loved. And our doctor, for my husband, has also been very supportive and checks in on us and answers our calls really quickly or gets back to us fast.