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Finding the Rhythm and Maintaining the Frame: Perceptions of Children

Living with a Parent with Mental Illness

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Elaine Mordoch, RN PhD

Funded by: Canadian Nurses FoundationCenter of Excellence for Child and Youth

Centered Prairie Communities, Health Canada

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Research Questions

1. How do children experience living with a parent with a mental illness?

2. How do children manage this experience?

3. What is helpful, unhelpful to manage this experience?

4. What are the outcomes for children?

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Literature Review 50% of people with mental illness live

with children

Children have 3 x the risk to develop emotional and behavioral problems

Exclusion of children’s perceptions

Resilience controversy

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Method: Grounded Theory(Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Glaser,

1978, 1992, 1998)

Participant observation Interviews, drawings Memos Constant comparative analysis Theoretical sampling Rigor

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Sample Characteristics Children

22 children in 14 families interviewed, 10 re-interviewed 8 girls, 14 boys 11 Children Ages 6-12 11 Children Ages 13-16

Parents 9 depression, 4 bipolar, 1 schizophrenia 12 parents with hospital or crisis stabilization unit admissions 4 parents receiving care at home

Families Mom ill in 11 families, dad ill in 3 families 1 family both parents ill 50% of families living in poverty

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The Basic Social Psychological Processes: Finding the Rhythm and Maintaining the Frame

“It’s like when you’re dancing, when you’re I guess dancing good, like everything is okay…

And then, say someone missed a step, she, like, gets depressed and then you sort of have to deal with learning that step, like, what made her depressed and then to deal with that and then you go on and on.” (Interview 15/2, Girl, Age 14)

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Fitting In

A social structural condition wherein the children had to consider how they were viewed by those in the outside world

Children exposed to interconnected contexts (school and peers) that influenced their views of themselves and their families

Stigma surrounding mental illness created barriers for some children in sharing their experience and getting help

Poverty limited their ability to fit in

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Outcomes of the Process Identity

Children developed a sense of self through school, friends, extended family and community

Children’s affective reactions in response to the perceptions of others influenced their sense of self

Connections to Parents Most children had

valuable connections with their parents which contributed to their lives.

Their view of their parents came from interactions when well and unwell

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Significance of the Study

Processes captured connecting to parents

Subjective distress masked as resiliency

Lack of knowledge regarding mental illness

Services remain organized around the parent’s illness

Importance of psychological and physical safety to children