Social worker and trainer Liz Brenner talks about the challenges of having a father with major mental illness. Liz describes his suicide attempt when she was 20, and how living with the fear of losing him was a form of relational trauma. She experienced first hand how the stigma and trauma of mental illness resulted in her father “trying to prove he was sane by avoiding all mental health professionals for 20 years,” and how mental health professionals can make a difference by including families, listening to them, treating them with respect and taking their reports of danger and risk seriously.
