I Am Not Sick, I Don't Need Help!: How to Help Someone with Mental Illness Accept Treatment

A primer on using LEAP to reframe conversation skills to use with loved ones with an SMI, and anosognosia. Coupling this book with a NAMI Family-to-Family course, it helped me to understand their condition, gaining new perspectives with better empathy. I’ve given copies to family members and my loved one’s therapist… it’s that impactful and effective.

This book is helpful in many ways but I think it's especially helpful if you're having trouble communicating with a mentally ill person or find yourself fighting with them about issues related to (or resulting from) their illness. This book teaches you about a person's "insight" into their illness and now that I understand that concept, I communicate differently with and have a better relationship with my loved one. This was the first mental health book I read from cover to cover; it is easy to read without overcomplicating anything. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for help communicating with or dealing with a mentally ill person.

(I have just read through this again, and I apologize for it being so long. If you don't want to read the whole thing, the summary is this: this book helps family and friends, particularly those who are new to mental issues, figure out what they can actually do to help in what appear to be hopeless situations, and it helps you a little bit to quit blaming yourself.)I read this book about the time that a close friend of mine fell completely to pieces -- again. He's creative, brilliant (a true "high genius"), has studied biology, is unusually knowledgeable about mental illness -- and is violently offended by any suggestion that he might have the same disease that institutionalized his mother for years and which appears to affect about a third of his close relatives (to varying degrees).There is apparently a book called the DSM that lists the exact requirements for psychological diagnoses. My friend can recite, word for word, all of the sections of this book that apply to his family's class of diseases. But he can't see that these items have anything to do with his own life.For example, he may tell you that he has all of the major signs of clinical depression, and that his mother was bipolar, and that there is a category of bipolar disease whose sole diagnostic requirements are (a) that the patient is clinically depressed and (b) that the patient has a close relative who is bipolar, and that FOR ANYONE ELSE, this definition means that they have a sub-class of bipolar disease, BUT NOT HIM.Like many people with his disease, he has done hallucenogenic drugs because he thought that being freaked out on LSD (or dead) might be better than being depressed. He has also become addicted to caffeine, tobacco, and any number of other legal or semi-legal substances.Like some people with his disease, he claims to have spoken with and fought with demons and other spirits, and he believes that certain specific geological features are as alive as any animal, but "in my case, this is just part of my spirituality, although in most people it would be a sign of mental illness."While he has finished college and held a couple of jobs, he has never once left a job on good terms with the employer, or, in fact, any individual on the staff -- they've all "suddenly changed, and turned against me." (Several of them "have tried to kill me.")He has been engaged to be married several times, but they've all "suddenly changed, and turned against me." He can point out the exact hour that each one "suddenly changed, and turned against me." That this moment corresponds to the sudden onset of clinical depression "is irrelevant."With a few exceptions, he is on poor terms with his family -- while they probably used to love him, he says, at some point, they've all "suddenly changed, and turned against me." (According to my friend, only one of them has tried to kill him.)He suffers from sudden, terrible depressions, which he never thinks of as an imbalance in his brain, but as a nat

I am the vice president of the local NAMI (National Alliance of the Mentally Ill) chapter and am only half way thru reading this book but am recommending it to everyone who who has a loved one with a mental illness. Xavier has been there and done that as evidenced by his methods that are working! My relationship with my 23 year old paranoid scizophrenic son has already greatly improved. I am now working with him instead of against him. I know that sounds strange, but it is true. I was doing more harm than good until I read this.

Xavier Amador has performed a tremendous service for families and therapists by translating the research on insight into mental illness into a highly readable and very practical book. Family members and therapists who read this will find their frustration with a "non-compliant" consumer melting away to be replaced with empathy and compassion, qualities that will enable them to begin laying the groundwork for a cooperative relationship with their loved one/client. Step-by-step methods for developing that relationship are clearly laid out, making this one of the most helpful, hopeful books to come along in a long time for those who treat or live with a mentally ill person. I Am Not Sick...adds to the number of excellent books written for families of the mentally ill, and, in my opinion, tops the list. I just wish it had been available 20 years ago when my sister became ill. I am convinced that she would be much better off today if we had had access to this information.