Parenthood among patients with psychotic disorders: gender differences in a non-selective clinical sample

Schrank, Beate; Rumpold, Tamara; Gmeiner, Andrea; Priebe, Stefan; Aigner, Martin

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2016.10.020

“…Patients with psychosis make up over half of the service users in a community mental health team [1] and over a third of individuals with psychosis are a parent [2][3][4]. These parents are more likely than the general population to live alone [5], be unemployed [6] and require social service intervention [7,8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental health professionals’ experiences of working with parents with psychosis and their families: a qualitative study

Radley

¹

,

Barlow

²

,

Johns

³

2021

BMC Health Serv Res

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Background Healthcare service users who are parents with psychosis form part of the caseload of most community mental health teams. Mental health professionals can experience uncertainty about how to work with and ask about the children of these parents, and often report difficulties when collaborating with other agencies. This study focused on professionals’ experiences of working with parents with psychosis and their families to gain an understanding of these parents’ needs from a service-level perspective, and to identify barriers that professionals may experience in meeting those needs. Methods Qualitative focus groups were conducted with four to eight mental health professionals per group. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. JR familiarised herself with the transcripts and then coded each salient unit within the text. Themes were then identified and discussed amongst all authors until there was agreement. Results We developed two overarching themes: 1) Diversity of need in parents with psychosis and 2) Role boundaries. The first explored mental health professionals’ perceived range of experiences that parents with psychosis and their families have, and the range of potential effects of parental psychosis on a child. The second theme described how some mental health professionals emphasised the importance of supporting service users in terms of their parenting status and others felt it was more critical to treat the person’s symptomatic expression. This theme also included issues with communication both with their service users and with other agencies. Conclusions Mental health professionals identified that the needs of parents with psychosis were diverse and reflected significant variation in the experiences of service users. Mental health professionals across different types of team (early intervention and community mental health) expressed contrasting viewpoints about how achievable it was to respond to a service user’s parenting status in an adult mental health setting. Future research should aim to determine where training is needed to enhance mental health professionals’ ability to work holistically with families in an adult mental health setting, and how to enhance collaboration with other agencies.

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“…Estimates of the proportion of people with schizophrenia who have children range between 38% and 44%, with women with schizophrenia being more likely to have children than men with schizophrenia (Campbell 2012;Schrank 2016), and in some parts of the world, the number of individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who have parental responsibility is rising (Campbell 2012). This may be in part due to newer atypical antipsychotic medication no longer causing such a large increase in prolactin levels, which is known to reduce fertility (Howard 2002), as well as people experiencing shorter hospital stays, giving them the opportunity to integrate into their community more than was possible before (Vigod 2012).…”

Section: B a C K G R O U N D Description Of The Conditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Over a third of people with schizophrenia and related disorders have children (Campbell 2012;Schrank 2016), and there is currently a lack of evidence regarding the e ects and e ectiveness of di erent ways of helping them to parent. Public organisations have highlighted the lack of evidence for this population.…”

Section: Why It Is Important To Do This Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parenting interventions for people with schizophrenia or related serious mental illness

Radley

¹

,

Grant

²

,

Barlow

³

et al. 2021

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

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“…Estimates of the proportion of people with schizophrenia who have children range between 38% and 44%, with women with schizophrenia being more likely to have children than men with schizophrenia (Campbell 2012;Schrank 2016), and in some parts of the world, the number of individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who have parental responsibility is rising (Campbell 2012). This may be in part due to newer atypical antipsychotic medication no longer causing such a large increase in prolactin levels, which is known to reduce fertility (Howard 2002), as well as people experiencing shorter hospital stays, giving them the opportunity to integrate into their community more than was possible before (Vigod 2012).…”

Section: Description Of the Conditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parenting interventions for people with schizophrenia or related serious mental illness

Radley

¹

,

Grant

²

,

Barlow

³

et al. 2020

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

2

0

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Parenthood among patients with psychotic disorders: gender differences in a non-selective clinical sample

Cited by 11 publications

References 40 publications

Mental health professionals’ experiences of working with parents with psychosis and their families: a qualitative study

Mental health professionals’ experiences of working with parents with psychosis and their families: a qualitative study

Parenting interventions for people with schizophrenia or related serious mental illness

Parenting interventions for people with schizophrenia or related serious mental illness

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