The impact of mental illness

Help!We tend to forget about families. In times of crisis it’s necessarily the patient who comes first. We are probably good about thinking of the carers, this quite correctly has been a focus for services for some time, but what about the children. Do we ever really understand and appreciate the impact of mental illness on the children of patients?

This is beginning to change. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has been producing training materials for those involved in treating mental illness focussing on the needs of their children and the “YoungMinds” project has highlighted the impact of stigma not only on those youngsters who are ill but who have parents with mental illenss.

The Guardian has published an article in which the author writes of her own experience and how, many years after the event she was able to talk to her mother about a previously unexplained period when her mother was ill. Not talking to children about a parent’s mental illness usually occurs as a result of the best of intentions but to exclude children can have profound implications for them, laying foundations for subsequent problems.

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