For family and friends

Invitation to help develop guidelines for family, partners and close friends of a person with bipolar disorder 

 

If you have experience and expertise in caring for a loved one with bipolar disorder, we invite you to share some of what you have learnt, and contribute to the development of carer guidelines.  Theses guidelines will enable many families, partners and close friends to be informed about the illness and how to deal with it. 

 

Many families, partners and close friends of people with bipolar disorder do not have much information on the illness, how they can help and ways to cope. We aim to develop publicly accessible guidelines with helpful information and suggestions to assist carers to deal with the illness, to be supportive and enhance their relationship and their own wellbeing. The involvement of experienced carers in this project is crucial to enable the guidelines to address carer issues, and be relevant and useful to carers. 

 

These guidelines are being developed with the help of expert carer, consumer and clinician panel members. Panel members will be asked to rate statements on internet based survey questionnaires about what information to include in the guidelines, and to add their own comments. They will receive a copy of the guidelines and related published articles. More information about the project can be found in the information sheet by clicking on the link here. 

 

If you are interested in being a panel member and assisting with the guidelines, please contact Lesley Berk at lberk@unimelb.edu.au