But you need a lot more than helping people with skills. You also have to teach them and help them learn about their psychiatric condition, to learn about treatments, to learn about medications, to learn about how to use the mental health system to accomplish their own personal goals. Those are all the things -- a lot -- treatment, medication, skills, the supports, and having programs that offer people opportunities.
MARTY MOSS-COANE: Do you find you have to teach people to recognize when symptoms might return and then know what to do before it really becomes full-blown?
ANTHONY SALERNO, PH.D.: You've hit on a very, very important point. Learning the symptom management skills and stress management skills are extremely important. It would be nice, it would be wonderful is medication was the cure-all and it really did the trick, but it's not like that. An individual needs to put considerable effort and energy into managing their symptoms, and there are techniques and skills to cope more effectively, and that's a very important part of what practitioners need to do.
MARTY MOSS-COANE: Do you want to add to that, and then we'll talk a little bit about your father?
JOSEPH BATTAGLIA, MD: It was in the book that once someone starts to recover, they immediately go back to where they left off developmentally. So if they were in the midst of accomplishing something, they recover and they want to right away go back to school or go back to their job, and there is where therapy to say, "Okay, how can we plan this out," versus saying, "You can't do it" -- which isn't true -- versus setting them up for failure by not having the skills to manage stress. I think the book pointed that out very well.
