Family Advocacy

To the Editor: We reacted with disbelief to Sylvia Caras' fantasy about the motivation for the founding of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) in September 1979.

As the originators of the idea to form an organization of groups across the country concerned about serious mental illnesses of their family members, we know what our motivation was. We can assure Ms. Caras that the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Dane County, in Madison, Wisconsin, where the meeting was held, and leaders of the other 30-some family groups did not have a primary objective "to protect themselves from blame."

The three objectives then and now remain the same: to improve services for persons with mental illness, to promote research to encourage recovery and alleviate suffering, and to educate NAMI members and society about mental illness.

The excellent reply by NAMI board member William Emmet to Ms. Caras's article deserves a close reading. Even though both of us as early national board members have answered complaints about NAMI over the years (a usual occurrence in any successful movement), we have not seen in print this degree of hostility and negative stereotyping of parents.

Ms. Caras appears not to accept the dilemmas faced by caring families who have mentally ill relatives. NAMI deserves better than being linked to the Salem witchcraft trials.

Ms. Shetler and Ms. Young were founding members of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Dane County, Wisconsin.