The proposal for the project SUCESS was formulated as a result of a growing awareness among the partners about the needs and problems faced by caregivers of individuals with mental illness. This concern led to the creation of the project partnership and the respective development of the project proposal, aiming to assist the project’s main target group, which comprises these informal carers. The role of families and carers of people with mental health issues proved to be crucial. Families needed to recognize what well-being meant in their lives - to identify and discover their role. Families of adults with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia had to find their own well-being in a way that would allow them to maintain self-esteem and resilience - a sense of purpose and personal fulfillment. Many organizations in Europe, such as Similes and EPIONI, actively participated in creating, changing, and monitoring laws and regulations on mental health at both national and European levels. The SUCESS project promoted high-quality learning opportunities for adults who were families of people with mental health problems.
During the 24-month project, we achieved the following: 1) Shared good practices for supporting family members of people with mental health problems in Europe. 2) Shared training programmes to support family members of people with mental health problems. 3) Shared national and international awareness campaigns for the social inclusion of adults with mental illness and their family caregivers. The need to include mental health among the priorities of the public health agenda was increasingly recognized by the European Union following the launch of the Commission's Green Paper on Improving Mental Health in 2005. The horizontal priority of inclusion and diversity in adult education was linked with spreading awareness about the needs of adults who are family caregivers of people with a mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. This led to a society with less stigmatization of adults with mental health problems. The adult education priority on improving the availability of high-quality learning opportunities for adults was linked with the sharing of successful training programmes for families of people with mental health problems, such as the program used by the Belgian partner Profamille and Prospect used by EUFAMI.