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Do you have a family member with mental illness? Have you struggled to understand the diagnosis? Would you like to know how to take care of yourself while caring for your loved one?

As family and friends of someone with a Substance Use Disorder, we often feel it is our responsibility to save or rescue our loved one. We do everything we can to help them and nothing seems to be working. As we try harder to control and manage their life, we end up having less time to care for ourselves. As a result, our lives become unmanageable and cycle of addiction continues and progresses. This is a difficult cycle to disrupt but with the right support and understanding of this disease, it is possible.

We know the holidays can be especially difficult. Please join SASS MoKan for an afternoon designed to help families during the holiday season.

This post was written by Hannah Silverman, a student at the University of Kansas who participated in the Leadership Tomorrow intership program through the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City. She partnered with the Greater Kansas City Mental Health Coalition, where she primarily worked on the You Be You teen mental health campaign.

You Be You is a teen mental health campaign that was developed by Bernstein-Rein Advertising (www.b-r.com) in collaboration with the Greater Kansas City Mental Health Coalition (www.itsok.us), Jewish Family Services (www.jfskc.org), and SPEAK UP (www.speakup.us), a group formed by two families who suffered the devastating loss of losing children to suicide.  100% of the funding for the campaign is funded by SPEAK UP.

For teens today, life is like a pressure cooker – demands at home, school, from peers and constant bombardment of messages from social media. With May designated as Mental Health Awareness Month, The Greater Kansas City Mental Health Coalition (GKCMHC) announces the launch of You Be You, an awareness campaign focused on changing those statistics and saving teen lives.