WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: The combination of coping with their mental health problems and caring for children makes parents vulnerable. Family-centred practice can help to maintain and strengthen important family relationships, and to identify and enhance the strengths of a parent with a mental illness, all contributing to the recovery of the person with the mental illness. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS TO THE EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: Taking the strength and the opportunities formulated by parents themselves as a starting point is fairly new. Parents with severe mental illness find strength for parenting in several ways. They feel responsible, and this helps them to stay alert while parenting, whereas parenthood also offers a basis for social participation through school contacts and the child's friendships. Dedication to the parent role provides a focus; parents develop strengths and skills as they find a balance between attending to their own lives and caring for their children; and parenting prompts them to find adequate sources of social support. In this study these strategies were found to be the fundamentals of recovery related to parenting. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?: Nurses can support and coach patients who are identified as parents, and self-chosen parenting related goals are set and addressed. A family-focused approach by nurses can be used to prevent problems for children and their families, identify their strengths as well as vulnerabilities, and address the challenges to build resilience.ABSTRACT: Introduction Understanding of the problems of parents with mental illness is growing. Gaining insight into strategies for parenting, while taking the opportunities formulated by these parents themselves as a starting point is fairly new. Question What are the strategies of parents with a mental illness to be successful? Method Experiences of 19 mothers and eight fathers with a mental illness were explored with in-depth interviews. Data were content analysed, using qualitative methods. Results Next to feelings of inadequacy, interviewees also describe how children enrich and structure their lives and are not only a burden but serve as distraction from problems. Developing activities that interest both child and parent provides avenues for emerging strength. Mental illness constrains fathers, but also gives opportunities to develop a meaningful relation with their children. Discussion Strategies like being fully dedicated to the parental role, finding a balance between attention for one's own life and parenting and finding adequate sources of support are found to be fundamental for recovery in the parent role. Implications for practice Peer groups can be of valuable help and mental health workers can support parents to set self-chosen parenting related goals.
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Always a complex and demanding task, parenthood can be an extra challenge when parents have severe mental illness. Clients with children may experience extra stress, feelings of uncertainty, and a lack of energy. They may have difficulty in talking about their disabilities with their children. Often, there are struggles with limited material resources and stigma or grief over the loss of having direct custody of their children. In all these situations, clients need support in interacting and communicating with their children in ways that benefit both parties. However, although there is a growing awareness of the needs of these clients and of parental responsibility for the children involved, the parental role is seldom a topic in mental health care. Within the field of rehabilitation, although there is considerable professional literature on skills training and experience in helping clients to realize personal goals in the areas of work, education, living arrangements, and social contacts, there are few or no tools to support clients who wish to strengthen their parenting skills.
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Abstract: Objective: The aim of this pilot implementation study was to explore the initial experiences with andimpact of Parenting with Success and Satisfaction (PARSS), a psychiatric rehabilitation and recoverybased,guided self-help intervention, for parents with severe mental illnesses. Methods: Changes in the PARSS intervention group were compared with changes in a control group in a nonequivalent controlgroup design. Outcome measures included: parenting satisfaction reported by parents; parenting success reported by mental health practitioners and family members; empowerment as reported by parents, practitioners and family members; and parents’ reported quality of life. Additional process data were obtained on relationship with practitioner, quality of contact, satisfaction with the intervention and fidelity. Results: Parenting satisfaction increased after 1 year for the PARSS group, but not for the control group. Parents’ reports of empowerment did not change for either group. The scores of parents’ empowerment reported by practitioners and family members increased in the control group, with no such change in the PARSS group. Quality of life improved significantly for the intervention group. Process measures showed that, although PARSS was not always implemented as intended, both parents and practitioners expressed satisfaction with the intervention. Conclusions and Implications for Practice: The first experiences with PARSS were mixed. This intervention, implemented by mental health practitioners, has the potential to function as a useful tool for supporting parents. Attention must be paid to enhancing intervention implementation and fidelity.doi: 10.1037/prj0000067PMID: 24866839
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