The Peer-to-Peer Course is a free 8-week course meeting once a week for 2 hours each week. This course is usually held twice a year. For more information, please call  (530) 894-8551 or email: cmphipps@csuchico.edu

• The course was written by Kathryn Cohan McNulty, a person with a psychiatric disability who is also a former provider and manager in the mental health field and a longtime mutual support group member and facilitator.
• An advisory board comprised of NAMI consumer members, in consultation with Joyce Burland, Ph.D., author of the successful NAMI Family-to-Family Education program, helped guide the curriculum’s development.
• The two course “Mentors” are trained in an intensive three day training session and are supplied with teaching manuals.
• Each class contains a combination of lecture and interactive exercise material and closes with Mindfulness Practice (techniques offered to develop and expand awareness).
• Each class builds on the one before: attendance each week is strongly recommended.
• Participants come away from the course with a binder of hand-out materials, as well as many other tangible resources: an advance directive; a “relapse prevention plan” to help identify tell-tale feelings, thoughts, behavior, or events that may warn of impending relapse and to organize for intervention; mindfulness exercises to help focus and calm thinking; and survival skills for working with providers and the general public.

Weekly Topics

Each class contains a combination of lecture and interactive exercise material and closes with Mindfulness Practice (techniques offered to develop and expand awareness). Each class builds on the one before: attendance each week, therefore, is required.

Week 1

Welcome. Course Orientation, Questions and Answers

Week 2

Introductions, Stigma, Discrimination, Trauma, begin Relapse Prevention Planning, Mindfulness

Week 3

Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder; Thoughts, Feelings, Sleep, continue Relapse Prevention Planning, Mindfulness

Week 4

Panic Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Senses, Behavior, continue Relapse Prevention Planning, Mindfulness

Week 5

Story Telling

Week 6

Language, Emotions, Personal Mayhem,; continue Relapse Prevention Planning, Mindfulness

Week 7

Addictions, Spirituality, Why Medicate? Physical Health, complete Relapse Prevention Plans, Mindfulness

Week 8

“Real World” Coping Strategies, Staying Safe, begin Advance Directive, Cultural Questions, Mindfulness

Week 9

Family Guest Speaker, Relationships, Allies, “Hot Buttons”, Keeping Safe, continue Advance Directive, Mindfulness

Week 10

Empowerment, Advocacy, complete Advance Directive, Evaluation, Closing Mindfulness