British Columbia Schizophrenia Society

Our online calendar at www.calendar.bcss.org contains support groups, training and events for people with a mental illness and their family and supporters. It is updated regularly and includes events and resources from all over British Columbia.

Private, facilitated online support groups for family members available 24 hours, 7 days @ www.support.bcss.org

The Family Respite Program provides a modest amount of funding to families to pay for activities or services to help give family members helping their ill relative a break or rest. As families are all different, each family is helped to come up with a respite plan that works for them. Please click on the link above for more details.

A fun and interactive performance that aims to educate young people about this brain illness while having a good time.

Partnership Education is based on a personal storytelling model. It is a unique and powerful presentation that helps people in the community to understand the nature and prevalence of chronic and severe mental illness.

The Kids in Control Support Group Program gives information, education and support to children eight to thirteen years of age who have a parent with a serious mental illness.

Do you have a relative or friend with a serious mental illness? Strengthening Families Together is a 10-session group for families and friends, which provides information, skill-building, and support.

BRIDGES is a course taught by consumers for consumers. BRIDGES helps people learn things that will help them in their journey to recovery. People who have taken the course find it helps them to be part of their own treatment. In the course, students learn about psychiatric diagnoses. They also learn about what mental health treatments work best.

A puppet show that educates grade 4/5 students in order to give them accurate information and to dispel the myths and misunderstandings about mental illness.

This program has been replaced by the Strengthening Families Together program.

The program matches volunteers with persons who are family members of persons with a serious and persistent mental illness. The volunteers, who are also family members of a person with a mental illness, provide peer listening and some information during a weekly phone call or visit. The program is now underway in selected regions of BC and is being looked at for implementation as far away as New Zealand.