Guides

NAMI publishes resource guides to support individuals, family and friends affected by mental illness to help navigate new or challenging experiences.

Parents and Teachers as Allies (2025)
NAMI wrote this guide to help parents, teachers, and other adults involved with students identify the key warning signs of early-onset mental health conditions. United with the knowledge from this guide, adults supporting youth can help them find services and supports for evaluation. This guide holds strategies parents and teachers can employ to help students thrive. Together, parents and teachers form an indispensable alliance and offer a positive difference for every student’s future.

By Youth, For Youth: Recommendations for the Youth Mental Health Crisis (2025)
The 2024 cohort of NAMI’s youth advisory group, NAMI Next Gen, wanted to learn from their peers what exactly youth want for mental health support. With guidance from NAMI staff, they created the NAMI Next Gen Community of Practice. Based on their own experiences as college students, NAMI program participants, community leaders, and policy advocates, the recommendations in this report highlight key opportunities for adults in the mental health field to enhance support for youth mental health.

Navigating a Mental Health Crisis (2025)
When mental illness is present, the potential for crisis exists – and when a crisis occurs, there isn’t time to search for answers. If your loved one experiences a mental health crisis, you’ll want to be prepared in advance. NAMI created this guide to help people learn the warning signs of a crisis, strategies to de-escalate a crisis, and which resources might be available for those affected.

Scaling Coordinated Specialty Care for First Episode Psychosis: Insights from a National Impact Model (2024)
NAMI is proud to be part of highlighting this whitepaper, which explores the potential societal and economic impact of scaling Coordinated Specialty Care (CSC) for first-episode psychosis (FEP). Expanding access to CSC programs for individuals in need could not only improve lives but also generate an economic return. The economic impact of CSC could result in potential cost savings across healthcare, employment, housing, criminal justice, and caregiving. In this paper, readers will find insights from a national model on the economic implications of reaching 90% access and become part of a conversation on what it might take to get there.

Navigating a Mental Health Crisis at Work (2024)
NAMI developed this guide to provide important, potentially lifesaving, information to people experiencing mental health crises in the workplace, their colleagues, managers, and corporate leadership. The guide outlines what can contribute to a crisis, warning signs that a crisis is emerging, strategies to help de-escalate a crisis, and resources that may be available for those affected. We also include information about how to manage the aftermath of a mental health crisis in the workplace.

Making the Workplace Work for All: Enabling Employee Success (2024)
Employers need to act now because the next generation of the workforce is entering the job market everyday with a significantly higher likelihood of having been diagnosed. This is a workforce planning strategy that is urgent for employers to start solving for now. Read on to learn more from Inclusively’s newest data and NAMI’s recommendations on helping employees thrive, starting with the data that shows just how imperative it is to learn more.

Schizophrenia and Psychosis Lexicon Guide (2023)
Language shapes treatment engagement, empowers individuals, and supports caregivers and patient advocates in fostering understanding and reducing stigma. This guide offers recommendations for preferred terminology and how to approach conversations about schizophrenia and psychosis, incorporating the perspectives of subject matter experts, individuals with lived experience and family members.

Circle of Care: A Guidebook for Mental Health Caregivers (2017)
NAMI has partnered with the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) to create this guidebook which provides resources and information to help friends, family and others who care for an adult with a mental health condition.