The national alliance of mental illness hosts a family to family class.  The family to family class is a 12 week program that is held once a week for 2 hours.  Each week is a new class.  The goal of family to family is to help families with a member suffering from mental illness with communication skills, understanding, how to get help, and they help them find resources.  I interviewed a volunteer named Brandy, who stated that these classes are important to her because they help families open up, despite all the stigma in regard to mental illness.  In Brandy’s opinion, class 9 is the most important class.  When you arrive at class 9 you are divided into four categories: child, spouse, parent, and sibling based on your relationship to the person with mental illness.   Each group then talks about their struggles and  messages they want to share about their specific relationship to the person with mental illness.  Each group then consults with each other and one person from each group shares the groups struggles and a message they want to share.  Brandy is unique because for the last 3 years, between taking them and teaching them she has been the only adult child of someone with mental illness that has come to the classes.  Her mother suffers from schizophrenia and as early as the age of seven was put in charge of her household becoming the maid, cook, mother to her 4 siblings, budgeter, and her mother’s only confidant.  When Brandy was younger she didn’t know that her mother’s mental illness is what prevented her mother from showing her love for her kids.  Brandy stated that over the course of her childhood and teenage years her mother was in psychosis more than she wasn’t.  When Brandy became an adult she moved out to begin her own life and lived with constant guilt in knowing that she was her siblings mother and she left them behind.  Not only has Brandy been affected but growing up with a parent with mental illness has and continues to affect her and her siblings lives.  One sibling is her mothers legal care taker now. As siblings their relationship can feel strained because of all they have been through and still go through.  Brandy’s message in this class is this, “ It takes a village for a normal functioning parent to raise a normal functioning child, it takes a kingdom for a normal functioning parent to raise a child with mental illness and it takes the world for an ill parent to raise a child.”  Brandy then told me that parents have thanked her for sharing her story because it has helped them realize that they need to be their for their child with mental illness their whole life.  To help them lead normal lives and the help their future grandchildren have better lives than what Brandy had.  Brandy said that this class really helps families out because they realize that they aren’t the only family going through similar struggles.