One thing I'm thinking about is how little representation there is anywhere of the perspective of those of us who have relatives with serious mental illnesses who we respect as fully human people.

The conversations in which the voices of relatives are valued are almost entirely dominated by calls for institutionalization and forced treatment, or the narrative that mental illness has robbed us of our loved ones or something.

And that's not how I feel. At all.

CW: suicide:

I want there to be more conversations about things like: How do you have a strong relationship with someone who might not survive?

How do you treat them as fully alive *now*?

I want to have more conversations about things like: When someone you love has a serious mental illness, how do you both respect their autonomy *and* assert appropriate boundaries?

I want to have more conversations about things like: What do you do when someone you care about needs a *lot* more help than you can give them — and you know that neither institutionalization nor forced treatment will help them?

I want to have more conversations about things like: How do you have a strong relationship with someone who you know isn't ok, when you also know that you're not going to rescue them?

I want to have more conversations about things like: When you know that someone's mental illness seriously impacts what they can and can't do, how do you, in a non-ableist way, insist that they treat you well?

I want to have more conversations about things like: How do we figure out what we actually owe to each other, and what it's ok to say no to? That's... a much more complicated question than it often seems.

I want to have more conversations about things like: How can we facilitate accessibility? What access needs are likely, and what's known about existing strategies for creating accessibility? What are some unsolved problems?

I want a conversation that acknowledges 'people with serious mental illness' and 'people whose relatives have serious mental illness' are strongly overlapping groups of people.

I want to have more conversations about things like: How do you relate to someone who is frequently abused *and* frequently has paranoid delusions or frequently tells stories about things that seem really implausible?

I want to have more conversations about things like: How do you insist on emotional reciprocity and mutual respect in a way that doesn't amount to telling someone 'just be normal already'?

CW: suicide
And, in particular: How do you deal with your own trauma when you can't comfort yourself with the idea that you can save everyone by calling the police on them?

What do you do with grief when the dominant narratives are dehumanizing? https://twitter.com/RutiRegan/status/1283827547688640514

I want to have more conversations about things like: What can a strong relationship with someone who is addicted to alcohol or other drugs look like when it's not likely that they're going to get sober any time soon or maybe ever?

What do boundaries and reciprocity look like?

I want to have more conversations about things like: People with serious mental illnesses are more likely to get caught up in the criminal justice system. What's the right thing to do if that happens to someone you care about? What if you know or suspect that they're guilty?