A new book aims to equip families navigating serious mental illness with practical knowledge about technology tools that are transforming psychiatric care but remain largely unknown to caregivers. Connected Care: A Practical Guide to Technology for Serious Mental Illness, by Nicole Drapeau Gillen, is now available on Amazon, offering the first resource organized specifically for families rather than clinicians or researchers.
Gillen, whose daughter has serious mental illness, wrote the book after her earlier work, Schizophrenia & Related Disorders: A Handbook for Caregivers, became an Amazon best seller with a 4.9-star rating, revealing a deep demand for practical guidance. Connected Care addresses what she calls the second gap: what technology offers after diagnosis.
The book covers more than 42 vetted digital tools, 60 pharmaceutical portals across 16 companies, six types of financial assistance programs, 10 AI use cases in psychiatric care, and 19 practical checklists. It is endorsed by Dr. Akira Sawa, Director of the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center, who notes that it "fills the potential gap between them with language that families can actually act on."
Serious mental illness, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, affects an estimated 14 million Americans, with tens of millions more caregivers. Yet no single resource has organized the expanding mental health technology landscape for those who need it most. The book explains passive sensing apps that detect behavioral shifts preceding relapse, FDA-cleared prescription digital therapeutics, telehealth platforms, and tools to fight insurance denials, which occur at rates 85% higher for mental health claims than comparable medical claims.
Gillen emphasizes that technology has created a parallel system families can use to get better care and save money, but most have no idea it exists. The book also addresses health equity, covering AI algorithmic bias, multilingual telehealth platforms, and financial programs for underserved populations, including Latino, Black, and rural families.
Maria Case, founder of Kompashion and NAMI National Speaker, whose mother had schizophrenia, noted her family spent ten years searching for answers: "I wish Connected Care had existed then."
For more information, visit ResourcesForSMI.com.
