What is your opinion of NAMI

NAMI: The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) was founded in 1979. It has since changed its name to National Alliance on Mental Illness.


I don't want to go first. What do you think ?

They're funded by the pharmaceutical industry. This tells me that their "alliance on mental illness" is driven by drug money and thus so are many of their views.

Cheze2 wrote:They're funded by the pharmaceutical industry. This tells me that their "alliance on mental illness" is driven by drug money and thus so are many of their views.

Look at all the cash http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Major_Foundation_and_Corporate_Support

If you look at 2013 they also take money from "Universal Health Services" owners of some of the most abusive psych places out there.

"Failure to Care "
A National Report on Universal Health Service’s
Behavioral Health Operations http://nappp.org/pdf/uhs.pdf

Obviously I think NAMI is despicable, Instead of using the drug company to clean up some human rights abuses wile pushing pills they also take money to advocate for the abusive places themselves !

This demonstrates how important transparency of funding is.

charter wrote:This demonstrates how important transparency of funding is.

Much agreed.

I don't think all of NAMI is bad, I think they can be quite helpful in some aspects. I think it's important to remember that funding source however when taking in any information from any company.

Im in Australia, we don't have NAMI but we have a similar group I think its pretty much the same, cant remember the name.

I have seen allot of NAMI stuff on the web,their website etc. And I have to say I don't like them at all.

They seem to be a group of "parents" who are into more force, more control over their so called mi relatives, of course they are funded by pharma companies so their motive is suspect? They seem to want more and more laws regulated bringing more control into mi ppls lives. The parents of these Nami ppl remind me of my own parents, my abusive mother absolutely Loved locking me up and getting me on a cto, and even the language these nami ppl use is weird like they don't really respect their 'mi' relatives and just want them under control.

Yeah, have to say I hate NAMI.

ps. I also saw on the nami website an article where it was like how to get your mi relative locked up in a hopstial if you are running into problems with the police etc. ie. if the police wont take your relative to a hospital , they said to "turn over the furniture" and make it look as thought the relative has been "violent" !!!WTF??

Cheze2 wrote:I don't think all of NAMI is bad

Stockholm syndrome ?

Copy_Cat wrote:Stockholm syndrome ?

Not at all. With their size and influence, there have been some positive things that they have helped to pass legislatively.

Devilock wrote:They seem to be a group of "parents" who are into more force, more control over their so called mi relative

A large portion of NAMI is family members. This is one aspect about NAMI that I REALLY detest as they do come across as trying to help their loved one, but the means tend to be through control and through thinking that their loved one is incapable of anything. I"m not decided yet if this is just a NAMI thing or if this is just a family thing in general as many family members I know are just AWFUL when talking about their loved one who has been diagnosed with a mental illness.

Cheze2 wrote:

Copy_Cat wrote:Stockholm syndrome ?

Not at all. With their size and influence, there have been some positive things that they have helped to pass legislatively.

Like what?

Devilock wrote:They seem to be a group of "parents" who are into more force, more control over their so called mi relative

A large portion of NAMI is family members. This is one aspect about NAMI that I REALLY detest as they do come across as trying to help their loved one, but the means tend to be through control and through thinking that their loved one is incapable of anything. I"m not decided yet if this is just a NAMI thing or if this is just a family thing in general as many family members I know are just AWFUL when talking about their loved one who has been diagnosed with a mental illness.

I don't actually think its a nami thing in particular, I think there is a large % of familys that are like this towards their mi relative. Certainly ppl who I have met who are so called 'mi', and speaking and hearing what their parents have to say, the parents come across as patronizing, wanting to control the relative, using them as a scapegoat etc. I also think there is a large % of ppl who would never have been diagnosed as 'mi' if it wernt for their familys, they simply would have recovered of got on with their lives and problems in other ways ie not being locked up forced drugged etc. Certainly with my family, my father is a caring individual in a way who does not believe in psychiatry and after I had some probs wchich I wont go into if it were he alone raising me, he would not have locked me up and force drugged me, and I probably would have recovered quicker. But being as though my mother was abusive, she had heard from friends of the psych hospital system and decided this was for me.

Devilock wrote:Certainly ppl who I have met who are so called 'mi', and speaking and hearing what their parents have to say, the parents come across as patronizing, wanting to control the relative, using them as a scapegoat etc. I also think there is a large % of ppl who would never have been diagnosed as 'mi' if it wernt for their familys, they simply would have recovered of got on with their lives and problems in other ways ie not being locked up forced drugged etc

agreed. The question then becomes, is it because the stigma is still out there regarding mental illness that the families are told/feel that they need to control this person? or is it the families who are geared towards needing this control that are driving the stigma?