Hamilton Centre Podcast | Exploring Mental Health & Addiction · Hamilton Centre

EP 7 – Holistic care for families affected by addiction and mental illness

·44 min·3 clips

Simple acts like saying, 'It must be really hard,' can change how families experience care.

1. Hamilton Centre Podcast episode 7 focuses on holistic care for families affected by addiction and mental illness. 2. Annie Williams hosts Brendan O'Hanlon, Associate Professor and Mental Health Program Manager at the Bouverie Centre, and Robert Campbell, Program Manager at SHARC's Family Drug and Gambling Help. 3. The episode asks how services can support families as well as the person experiencing mental ill health, alcohol use, drug use, or gambling harm. 4. Brendan says Bouverie Centre at La Trobe University is a research, practice, and translation centre. 5. He says the centre provides clinical services to families, trains people in family therapy to master's level, and builds capability in services that mainly work with individuals. 6. Rob says Family Drug and Gambling Help has operated since 2000 as a family service for people affected by another person's addiction. 7. He describes SHARC's model as peer-based, with volunteers, a 24-hour helpline, support groups, education, and family crime management. 8. Brendan traces family inclusion in mental health back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when family blaming shaped thinking about schizophrenia. 9. He says early efforts used families as a means to cure illness, before psycho-educational programs linked family involvement to relapse prevention and readmission reduction. 10. Brendan says current guidelines for serious mental illness often recommend family inclusion, psychoeducation, and skills training. 11. He says family interventions in mental health are often described as one of the most robust psychosocial evidence bases. 12. Rob says AOD funding still goes mainly toward treating the individual, not the family's support needs. 13. He says Family Drug and Gambling Help began as a grassroots response during the heroin peak in the late 1990s, not as a government initiative. 14. Brendan says family members caring for someone with serious mental illness have twice the rates of depression and anxiety seen in the general community. 15. Rob says he was struck in the mid-1990s by how often families were treated as a problem to be blocked away. 16. He also points to alcohol, Valium, smoking, and other coping patterns that families may not recognise as their own health risks. 17. The conversation repeatedly returns to shame, stigma, and the fear that families will be judged as failures or as the cause of the problem. 18. The tone is conversational and clinical, with both guests moving between service models, research, and practical examples from family life. 19. Best for people interested in family support, mental health services, AOD policy, and peer-based care. 20. Less useful for listeners wanting personal storytelling, drama, or a fast-paced narrative arc.

As heard by us

A calm, service-minded case for keeping families in view in care.

Brendan O'Hanlon and Robert Campbell make a steady case that families and caregivers should sit inside the mental health and addiction conversation, not on its margins.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want the family side of addiction and mental health care explained without slogans or easy answers.

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