Barriers to collaboration between mental health professionals and families in the care of persons with serious mental illness.

Mental health professionals do not often collaborate with families when providing treatment to the mentally ill, even though research shows better patient outcomes with family involvement. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) developed a course, Professional Provider Family Education Course (PP FEC), to educate mental health providers in outreach to families. This article reports the findings of a study which evaluated the PP FEC and identified barriers to collaboration between families and mental health professional providers.