Identification of Children of Parents With Mental Illness: A Necessity to Provide Relevant Support

Abstract

Background: The main objective of this study was to identify and describe core life circumstances of children with mentally ill parents (COPMI) and their parents. Knowledge about COPMI aged 0–17 years is necessary, as assessment of the risk and protective factors in their lives provide solid background for preventive interventions.Methods: Participants (N = 422) were parents of minor children (N = 589) receiving treatment in the clinic for psychiatric illness and substance abuse at the University Hospital of Northern Norway. Data was drawn from electronic patient journals.Results: A total of 286 mothers and 136 fathers participated in the study, and 46.3% were single parents. Parents had 1–7 children (M = 2.24; SD = 1.02). Most parents had one diagnosis (n = 311, 73.7%), and mood disorders was the most frequent type of diagnosis. The largest proportion of parents had serious mental disorders (n = 185; 46.0%), and a large proportion of the sample was affected by disorders of moderate severity (n = 156; 38.8%). The mean age of the children was 8.6 years (SD = 4.97), and 432 children (74.6%) had one or more siblings. The large majority of children had access to adult resource persons other than the mentally ill parent (n = 424; 94%), but 6% of the children (n = 27) did not. About three quarters of the children (76.2%, n = 526) were living with the mentally ill parent (n = 401), and 170 children (32.5%) lived with a single parent with a mental health disorder and siblings, full time or part of the time. The odds that parents had informed their children about the treatment/hospitalization and condition was higher the older the child was (p < 0.001), and the youngest children rarely got necessary information about this.Discussion: Risk and protective factors associated with the children's ages, access to resource persons, information about the parent's health problems and treatment are discussed in relation to different preventive steps for COPMI.

Prevalence of maternal mental illness among children and adolescents in the UK between 2005 and 2017: a national retrospective cohort analysis

“…Providing mothers with the correct diagnosis and treatments is of key importance. Children's needs are clearly distinct from their parents 30 . Underlying environmental factors such as poverty or violence in the home are important sources of adversity for children exposed to maternal mental illness 31 .…”

Does coercion matter? Supporting young next-of-kin in mental health care

“…26,27 Similar to international trends, there has been an increased focus on the needs of children with parents with mental health problems. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Consequently, in 2010, Norway added two legislative provisions that oblige health personnel to attend to minor relatives and to designate children-responsible staff (CRS). 28,29 The responsibilities of CRS are to promote and coordinate health personnel's follow-up with patients' minor children.…”

“…[12][13][14][15][16] Therefore, health personnel should ascertain what kind of support measures these children need and start the necessary followup. [17][18] In Norway, about 15-20% of all hospitalised patients are involuntarily admitted (about 5000 adults). 19 There are similar occurrences internationally, although there are variations in the use of involuntary admission among countries.…”

“…Presumably, a significant number of these patients have close family members who are minors. Yet although there are established research traditions relating to children and siblings of mentally ill persons [12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and to coercion in mental health care, 3,[20][21][22][23] few studies have focused on how children might be affected by a coercive commitment of a close relative to a hospital. Research has not explored the risks of harm and the needs of children in such families, nor how young next-of-kin should be supported when a close family member, parent or sibling undergoes forced treatment.…”

Results From an RCT on Brief Parent Training: Long Term Effects on Parental Quality of Life

“…Already two decades ago researchers established that maternal depression affected children’s social, behavioral, emotional and cognitive development negatively (Goodman and Gotlib, 1999). Recent research emphasize that the transmission of risk for psychopathology from parents to children is both diagnosis-specific and general and that the way parents cope with the parenting role and interact with their offspring is highly significant in this regard (Reedtz et al, 2019). In a recent study by Rollé and colleagues (Rollè et al, 2017) the researchers found that the level of parental distress, anxious and depressive symptoms appeared to be higher in mothers than in fathers.…”