- [Narrator] Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F. Osborne Foundation, the Schillhaun-Huskey Foundation, and viewers like you, thank you.

(cheerful music) - On today's episode of "Chattanooga: Stronger Together", we will learn about two Chattanooga non-profits.

One provides mental health support services to families.

The other has a unique way of giving children a comfortable place to sleep.

We're stronger together, Chattanooga.

So stay tuned to learn more.

(cheerful music) Welcome to "Chattanooga: Stronger Together".

I'm Toni Miles, in 1985, NAMI of Chattanooga organized as the affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Founded in 1979, NAMI is dedicated to improving the lives of families with mental health issues.

We are pleased to have the president of the organization, Kathy Milam with us today.

Kathy, thank you for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me, Toni.

- Oh, it's our pleasure, and I have one big opening questioning for you, tell us about NAMI.

- How I got to NAMI was because I have a daughter who is Schizoaffective and bipolar.

And I needed help trying to figure it out.

This was about 15 years ago.

- [Toni] Okay.

- We lived up in Michigan, and she definitely was showing signs.

I sought out a family to family class, which is one of our signature classes and I learned a lot there.

- Wow, so tell me about the classes.

Tell me about the different classes that you all offer.

In particular NAMI Basics.

- Right.

- Is that it?

- We have several classes and presentations that we give, NAMI Basics is for youth up to age 22 who have a mental health diagnosis or are showing signs possibly of a mental health issue.

So this is a class, and all our classes are on Zoom now.

- [{Toni] Okay.

- So you would meet in a class for six sessions, and you would be with other families in the same situation.

And you just learn how to care and communicate, and how to deal with the issues, how to get providers.

How to function through the school system.

This class is also available; it's called NAMI Basics OnDemand.

And this is totally given on the internet.

You can go to nami.org, and you can take it whenever you can find the time to get to the classes.

So it has a great availability, and all our classes are free, and they are all taught by those who have lived experience.

That is you will be taught by a mom, or a dad, or a caregiver who has already dealt with a situation.

- Wow, wow, just how prominent are the mental health issues today?

- Well, one in five Americans have a mental disorder at some time in their life, one in 20 have a serious mental disorder, which I would say is schizophrenia, maybe serious bipolar.

A lot of youth have the same, they have the same numbers.

And we believe in early intervention.

It's just like any other disease, like cancer, any disease like that.

If you can get to it earlier, the better.

So that you can begin to treat and manage this disorder before it gets really bad.

- So what are some of those signs that as parents, as family members, as people who care, that may let us know that something's not quite together?

- Right, well, first of all, you will have to allow yourself a lot of grace because no one knows what you have.

And no one's ever taught you.

- Oh.

- So no one knows about mental illness, and that's where we come in.

But some of the signs that you could be concerned about are say, maybe isolating for a couple of weeks at a time, and that's abnormal, maybe sudden weight loss or weight gain, maybe overindulgence in alcohol or drugs.

Erratic behavior, sudden mood swings.

And you know as a caregiver, as a parent, you just know when something's not quite right.

It's always a good idea to seek treatment and just get some answers.

- Well, sometimes in families it's like, "oh, that's the DNA, that's uncle so-and-so, "that's aunt so-and-so."

- Right, well, a lot of families too deal with stigma.

- [Toni] Yes.

- They don't want to reach out and get help.

There's shame, there's blame, there's fear.

But when you come to us in NAMI Chattanooga, you will be greeted with open arms, we welcome you.

- I love that, and I really think you're right about the shame, you're right about the blame, and all of that, but at the same time, I know a lot of cultures have a hard time embracing that.

- They do.

- And so I just really, thankful to you guys that you're here to bring, I mean, let us know that mental illness is no different than high blood pressure.

- Right.

(Toni laughs) - And we have those signs, and it has to be treated.

I wanna go back, 'cause I wanna talk about, I know there's a lot of parents watching us.

And really talk about what you all do with young people, even younger than, you said youth up to age 22?

- [Kathy] Mmhm.

- But what about younger, what about children?

- We would recommend, we never give professional advice.

We never recommend specific professionals.

We only can guide you from our lived experience.

And we would definitely direct you to the nami.org website or namichattanooga.org.

There's an amazing amount of resources there, amazing.

You can get lost in those websites forever.

- Okay.

- And you would learn about NAMI Basics.

I would totally recommend that.

And just get in there, and dig in and learn.

And find out, don't be afraid.

You're not alone, that's one of our key points in NAMI, is you are not alone.

You do not have to fight this battle alone.

We have a helpline which people can call, and mostly a person answers the phone, we're all volunteers.

Every day of the week we answer, and we will guide you, we will just listen, if that's what you need, we will just listen.

We will guide you to where you go for help.

How do you get help, also, we recommend our Zoom support group, we're all Zoom now.

We have a wonderful support group.

People come together and we share our strength and hope.

There's no shame, there's no situation that is too out there to talk about.

We put our arms around you and we welcome you.

And it's a safe place, and that's a wonderful thing that we do.

One of the great things that we have is called a Family-to-Family class.

- [Toni] Okay.

- And that's actually how I got to NAMI.

- Okay.

- It's all peer to peer, and when I say that, I mean, it's moms and dads, caregivers like me who have been trained to teach the class.

And we have a wonderful, it's eight sessions.

It's evidence-based by SAMHSA as a great class and as productive.

And it's eight sessions of three hours each.

And over time, the families who come to this really bond and they make friends, and we cover a lot of different mental health disorders.

We talk about that, we talk about how the brain functions.

We work on on different medications.

One of the great things that we teach in this class is communication with your loved one.

It's amazing how much we can help people deal with their current situation.

- Okay, great, if we want to get involved, how do we get involved, real quick?

- Oh, that's great, we always need passionate volunteers.

We are completely passionate volunteers, completely volunteer-based.

You would go to namichattanooga.org or call our helpline number.

- Coming up next, we will speak with Bob Hirschi from Sleep in Heavenly Peace, stay with us.

- [Narrator] We wanna know how you serve your community.

Send us photos or videos of you or your family volunteering, and we might feature it on a future episode, Email stronger@wtcitv.org, or use the hashtag; #StrongerWTCI on social media.

- Welcome back, today, we're going to learn about the impact of Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

We have with us the executive director, Bob Hirschi.

This nonprofit began in a garage with a single family needing beds for their children.

Bob, thank you for being here.

Now, let's chat, let's talk about this.

Let's share with the audience why this organization exists today.

- The organization started in 2012, when Luke Nicholson heard of a family at Christmas time that needed some beds, kids didn't have beds.

Took his kids out in the garage and built a couple of beds.

Just very basic, simple beds, and took 'em and delivered 'em to this family, and they were ecstatic.

- [Toni] Wow.

- Couldn't believe how it made him feel, and his kids to do this at Christmas time, to help some kids have a bed.

So he went back home, had some more wood, and he said, "we'll make a couple more beds "and put it on Facebook Marketplace "or Craigslist, one of 'em, and see "if anybody wants or needs a bed."

Well, the response was overwhelming.

He had a lot more than he bargained for, and realized that, hey, this was something he could do with his church youth group.

- [Toni] Okay.

- And so they started building beds with their church youth group and giving them away.

And after probably a year of doing that, another friend of his heard what he'd been doing with his church youth group and said, "hey, we can do that in Boise too."

Luke is in Twin Falls, Idaho.

And so friend started a group in Boise, Idaho, and two years later, seven groups had gathered and started forming or had formed, and were doing the same thing.

In 2017, October, 2017, this guy, Mike Rowe heard about Luke.

Mike Rowe, "Dirty Jobs" guy, had started a Facebook program called "Returning the Favor".

Where he went around the country, looking for people, working in their community to do a little bit more than the average person.

He found Luke Nicholson our founder, and went up in October, 2017, and videoed him.

Shot him and surprised him with donation of a building space to be for a couple of years.

- [Toni] Wow.

- And in February of 2018, it aired.

And by that time they'd grown two more chapters, were up to nine chapters.

We will fast forward a little bit, because I watched "Returning the Favor" faithfully every week.

- Okay.

- But I missed that one.

- No.

- Come September, my daughter was home in the evening, and I pulled it up and was showing it to her.

And I said, "I don't know how I missed "this episode.

- That segment.

- I don't know, but watched it.

And I worked with two different homeless groups at the time.

- Okay.

- One is Family Promise, and another one was a local organization, Scenic City ARK, where we went and fed people homeless on the street every week.

And I said, "when Family Promise, "whenever these families come out of being homeless, "they need beds", and so I said, "this fits right in with what I do."

And I said, "man, this is amazing.

"We need to start a chapter here in Chattanooga."

And so the next morning I got up, and I walked like I normally did at the time.

And walking and praying, and said, "God, if you want me to start this here in Chattanooga, "I need my friend Dave to be part of this.

"I can't do it by myself."

And so I called Dave, and I said, "Lord, if he answers and responds positively, "we'll open a chapter here."

Well, I called and he didn't answer.

And I'm walking 15 minutes later, and I said, "well, Lord, I guess, yes, that's the answer.

"I'll let it go, my phone rang, and Dave says, "what's up?"

And I talked to him about it, told him what it was.

And he says, "I'm on board, let's go."

And so in January of 2018, we went to Twin Falls, Idaho and took chapter president training.

We became chapter 134.

- 134?

- From nine to 134 in one year.

- Wow.

- There's now over 250 chapters across the country, Bermuda and Canada.

- Wow.

- And when we started, had no idea.

I didn't have a clue as to how many beds we would build our first year, how many bed builds we would have, how many kids would get off the floor.

But praise the Lord, we did over 600 beds our first year.

- The first year?

- The first year.

- 600 and something beds?

- And it's just been amazing.

- [Toni] How are the bed builds built out?

- [Bob] We have a mobile production facility.

- [Toni] Okay.

- We go into parking lots, we can do it.

We have generators, and we go and set up our production line, and we take raw lumber.

We go from sanding, to marking holes, drilling holes, putting headboards together, inside boards together.

The beds are not fully assembled, but they're ready to be assembled.

Such as when we take 'em into a home, we can assemble a bed in just 10 minutes.

It's not an Ikea bed that takes hours, it's 10 minute build.

And we go into the homes and we build them, put a brand new bed together.

It's a brand new mattress and all new bedding.

Everything we do is new, we don't give away anything used.

- I love that, I really do.

So when you go to take the beds to these families, how is that set up, who identifies the families?

And then when you go in, share with the audience what that is like.

- Right, the process to request a bed is; they go to our website, our national website, shpbeds.org.

And there's a button at the top of the page to apply for a bed, and they go through there.

There's an application process.

When they click in, it asks what state they're in.

And we have Tennessee or Georgia because we cover into North Georgia, Ringgold area and Fordow.

They click on that, follow the links, fill it out.

Even though it goes through the national website, it comes directly to me.

I look at the application, read the application, make sure it is in our area, because we've had some from outside the area.

Mississippi and other places, but as long as they're within our area, and the children are between the ages of three and 17, I pass it on.

Put it in our queue, and we have a case manager that will go out, visit the home, make sure the need is real, we're not here to replace beds, to just give somebody a new bed.

We're here to get kids off the floor or off the sofa, or a air mattress, or sleeping with parents, or sleeping with siblings.

But then once that happens, our case manager goes into the home, checks, and says, "all right, make sure we've got "a clean place to put the bed, we've got room to put it.

"Make sure there is space for the beds."

And then our delivery coordinator will call the family after our home visit is done.

And we'll coordinate a time to go in and set those up.

And delivering the beds is the most awesome thing.

I play with the kids sometime, and I said, "now, this bed's not free, you gotta pay for it, "and only you have what it takes to pay for it.

"And that's that beautiful smile."

- [Toni] Oh wow.

- Our beds cost a smile, we charge a lot, but we get paid, oh, we get paid-- - It's priceless, isn't it?

- It is, you can't pay for it with money, that's for sure.

The smiles are just amazing, and we love it.

- In terms of a build, how many beds can you all do?

- All right, our bed builds are typically sponsored.

- Okay.

- Somebody will hear about us and say, "hey, I'd like to sponsor a bed build."

And we've had several dental offices that have built beds or sponsored bed builds.

And we try not to do small builds because it takes the same time to set up for a build.

Whether we build 10 beds or we build a hundred beds, it takes the same time to set up.

- [Toni] Same time.

- And the same time to put our equipment up.

but we have done as small as 10 beds onsite.

We are currently setting up a warehouse area that is our own warehouse areas, so that we can actually go in.

And if you wanted to come and bring a crew from here and bring six, eight people, we could go into our warehouse and do a build.

And we might build three or four beds.

And being a static location and set up all the time, then we save all that set up time and break down time, and we can do that.

But for our mobile builds, we've done 10, 15 bed builds.

We'd prefer to do bigger.

And because God has blessed us with finances, if I have a group that says, "hey, we've got 30 people "that would like to help, but we can't afford that much.

"We can afford 15 beds."

For our time, we'll go ahead and buy additional materials.

and made you set up to 40 or 50 beds, depending on the time that we have.

And we can build 50 beds in two hours and 15 minutes, to two hours and 30 minutes with 40 people.

- How can we get involved with what you do?

- The first thing is the sponsoring the builds.

And you can go to Facebook.

We do most all of our communication by Facebook.

And go to SHPChattanooga, and we keep all our current information on there.

You can go to shpbeds.org.

- [Toni] Okay.

- And there is the national organizations website.

There is information on there, and contact information for us can be found there.

But the best way is Facebook.

- [Toni] Okay.

- And I know everybody doesn't have Facebook, and it's for us older folks, but some of the younger folks have gone to other things, but we found it a great way to communicate with a lot of people quickly.

And so you can sponsor a build, and we'll bring our equipment out.

We can bring it out here and set it in your parking lot.

We can set it in the room next door inside.

And churches have done it, where we use a gym or a parking lot.

We've set up in Lowe's parking lot, and done a lot of builds there because it's very public.

- [Toni] Okay.

- Then the other thing is deliveries.

The two options, bigger options for volunteering or builds and deliveries.

And on deliveries, we do deliveries on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

And again, on our Facebook page, we have a special group for delivery team.

And if somebody wants to join our delivery team, they put their name in there, and then they get the communication just for deliveries.

And a typical delivery will take, yesterday we were out two and a half hours and delivered 12 beds.

- Okay.

- There were about six of us.

And so it's fun, it's exciting.

We see some sad situations, but we got a letter back the other day from a grandmother, said her gran girls would not leave the bedroom.

- Oh wow, that is beautiful.

- And that they were so excited to have those beds.

Even though the housing situation, the home situation was not good, it was so exciting to hear that these girls had a safe place to sleep.

A great place to sleep, and they were so excited.

- [Toni] All right, Bob.

- We're just so blessed by it.

- We love the work that you all are doing.

And we thank you for coming today and sharing your mission with us.

And thank you for joining us.

We hope that "Chattanooga: Stronger Together" serves as a trusted source of information for viewers like you, who are looking to make a difference in our community.

So let us know what you think.

Email us at stronger@wtcitv.org, or use the hashtag; #StrongerWTCI on social media, I'm Tony Miles, and for all of us here at WTCI, we'll see you next time.

(cheerful music) - [Narrator] Get on demand access to even more of the shows you love with WTCI Passport, an exclusive benefit for members of WTCI PBS.

Watch your favorite shows in passport on the PBS Video app, download it today.

- [Narrator] Support for this program is provided by the Weldon F. Osborne Foundation, the Schillhaun-Huskey Foundation, and viewers like you, thank you.