Susan Inman

Susan Inman is a longtime drama and English teacher at a secondary school in Vancouver, BC. Following the onset of her younger daughter's catastrophic schizoaffective disorder, Susan began to write about serious mental illnesses for a variety of Canadian publications. Her memoir, After Her Brain Broke, Helping My Daughter Recover Her Sanity, was published by Bridgeross in February 2010. Susan speaks publicly in a variety of large and small events across Canada and in the US about the situations of families helping to care for a family member living with a serious mental illness.

Susan's articles about issues related to psychotic illnesses can be found in Huffington Post Canada, The Tyee, The National Post, and BC Teacher. For a complete list of her articles, readers can visit her publisher's website. On the site, they can also learn about her presentations as both a keynote speaker as well as a workshop presenter. Some of the recent conferences where Susan presented keynote speeches include the Toronto conference of the Canadian Association of Psychiatric Nurses and at annual schizophrenia conferences in Edmonton and in Vancouver. Recent workshop presentations include the annual conference of the British Columbia School Counsellors' Association (on how school counsellors can better support students living with psychotic illnesses and their families), the National Shared Care Conference (on the typical problems confronting family caregivers at this conference sponsored by the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the National Association of Family Physicians) and the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) Conference in Seattle (on helping families develop their own stories in order to improve mental health services).

Some of the issues that Susan's advocacy efforts focus on include:

> requiring all programs training mental health professionals to include science based curriculum on psychotic illnesses

> public education about psychotic illnesses

> improving mental health legislation and policies so that people experiencing psychosis aren't left to deteriorate and don't end up homeless, victimized or incarcerated

> expanding cognitive remediation programs in Canada