Supporting parents with enduring mental health problems

• The combination of coping with 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 parents with a mental illness, thus contributing to their recovery.
• Parents with mental illness find strength for parenting in several ways. They feel responsible, and this helps them to stay alert while parenting; parenthood also offers a basis for social participation.
• Dedication to the parental 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 support and leads to a valued identity.
• Practitioners can support parents with mental health problems to set and address parenting related goals.