"Loving Someone with a Serious Mental Illness: Caring for Your Loved One and Yourself on the Journey to Mental Health Recovery" was written by real-life couple Katherine Pointe and Izzy Goncalves. Katherine is incredibly open about living with a serious mental illness, which she refers to as SMI, and Izzy shares his insights as both her spouse and her caretaker. A SMI is "a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder resulting in serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. This can be something as serious as bipolar disorder or something as common as an anxiety disorder. Pointe and Goncalves provide details and insight into each of these disorders and make them all easy to understand.

According to this book, recovery is the end goal and has ten guiding principles, some of which are hope, peer support, and respect, among others. The authors spend time discussing each of these principles, both from the point of view of the sufferer and the caretaker. This book is a very thorough tool for anyone looking to know how to best help their loved one. I know that many readers will find it helpful and will be able to apply many of the principles to their own lives. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

I think this could be a helpful book for lay people. As someone who is a former psychotherapist who works in health or mental healthcare, I found it very basic. It was very prescriptive--I would have loved to have seen real-life stories, vignettes, etc. to help readers relate better.