Mental Health And Its Effects On Children Essay

In the United States there has been increasingly more conversations about mental illnesses. In some cultural communities, it is a taboo to speak about mental illness. This needs to change. More discussion on mental illnesses can help people get the treatment they need. Discrimination against the mentally ill needs to stop as well. The more discrimination people with mental illnesses face, the less likely they will be to interact with society which can potentially worsen their mental state. The absences of fathers and father figures is an ongoing issue which some predict might not slow down any time soon. The research previously mentioned comes to a general consensus that the absence of fathers and father figures are taking a toll on the lives of young children which can affect them later on in life. With that being said, it is important that present fathers maintain the relationships they currently have with their children and that mothers find a well-equipped person to be a father figure in their children

Living with a parent suffering from a mental illness can have huge negative effects for the developing child. It has been proven numerous times that there is a genuine link between parental mental illness and its adverse effects for children, e.g. Rutter, 1966, Cleaver et all, 1999. These effects can often manifest themselves as anxiety, self-esteem issues, poor relationships, educational underachievement, and emotional and behavioural problems. It should be noted that an extremely low percentage of mentally unwell parents intentionally abuse their children physically or emotionally. Another interesting facet of the parent-child relationship within the context of mental health, is that oftentimes, the child of a mentally unwell parent can often develop the same mental illness as the parent.

In the past quarter century there has been increasing evidence that the quality of parental care in the early years is vital in the future mental health of children. (Bowlby, 1953)

This article examines the effect of poverty on children’s mental health by studying the relationship between children’s’ family histories of poverty and children’s mental health. The research is conducted by using the data from the Children of National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth data set (1986, 1988, 1990). McLeod and Shanahan are interested in finding out the relationship between poverty histories and children’s mental health trajectories. They concluded that poverty has effects on children’s mental health and it continues to affect them as they grow older. Political debates about welfare reforms are based on the poor adults, however, McLeod and Shanahan proves the importance of including children’s experience in the policy decisions. “In fate of poor children is ignored in political discussions of welfare reform, the future costs to society will be high” (McLeod and Shanahan, 1996)

According to US studies, 58% of children with serious mental emotional disturbance have a history of family mental illness, and 40 % have a history of parent psychiatric time in a hospital (Biebel et al. 2004). In 2013, about 10 years after the IOM un-equal treatment report, almost the

Children with mentally ill parents often have a mental illness of their own. Typically when the term “mental illness” is used, many people believe it to be schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, or severe bipolar disorder; a mental illness can be depression or something as simple as anxiety. Children who have ill parents, especially if they are in and out of psychiatric hospitals, “find it difficult to cope because they do not have the maturity and coping tools to deal with certain complex situations.” (Byrne). An unstable relationship between child and parent(s) can lead to many issues with the child, such as high anxiety levels. Children with high anxiety levels often “find it difficult to concentrate on a task or school work due to their anxiety.”

According to National Alliance on Mental Health (2016), recent findings have concluded that 1 in 5 adults have experience with a mental disorder in a given year. Children that are associated with these individuals can have different outcomes of life as compared to families without said individuals. These outcomes don 't necessarily have to be positive or negative, but they do become a substructure of who you are. As a child of a parental figure who continuously suffers with manic depressive disorder, I 've always wondered how or why this psychiatric disorder has had a direct impact on my way of life. The children that deserve an explanation, whether it can help them or not, is what makes this question so significant.

Despite the negative impacts and disruptive nature poor mental health presents to families many are disinclined to seek professional help. Potentially, this may be the result of the stigma felt from a negative communities’ attitudes about mental illness. It may also be due to fear about custody or child protection issues. However, practitioners study and train for years in

It is estimated by the American Psychological Association that there are 15 million children in the United States that can currently be diagnosed with a mental health disorder (Ahmann, 2013). Elizabeth Ahmann (2013) the Co-Editor of “Family Matters” in Pediatric Nursing, interviewed four mothers of children who were diagnosed with a mental illness; in an attempt to find out how they were able to reach out to escape the grief and isolation that comes with having a mental health diagnosis for one’s child in an article entitled, “Making Meaning When a Child Has Mental Illness: Four Mothers Share Their Experiences.”

Children during the depression had many jobs and responsibility’s, the depression was also a very bad time for most abled bodied children in the United States. Children during the depression had to get jobs as soon as possible to help out there family’s. Most children who had jobs got them while being under the age of 16 (Yellowitz), they also only got paid about half of what adults got paid. The depression was the reason child labor laws are in affect today. It is also why everyone gets paid minimum wage when they first start working in lower waged jobs. During the depression children mostly worked in factories, or mines. This was

Hospitalisation of a parent with acute mental health problems impacts the consumer, their extended family/carers and children. Mental health nurses are at the forefront of promoting recovery for consumers in an acute inpatient setting. Recovery-oriented care can include provision of family-focused care which supports recovery of the parent-consumer and their family members and contributes to prevention of intergenerational mental illness. The aim of this narrative literature review was to explore existing knowledge regarding the experiences, care and support needs of parent-consumers, their family members/carers and children during the parent's acute mental health hospitalisation. It also aims to explore existing knowledge about the practices

In 2010 Tally Moses released a paper exploring the amount of self-blame parent’s felt towards their children who had been diagnosed with various mental disorders. He defined self-blame as “holding themselves responsible for causing, contributing to, or exacerbating their child’s mental disorders with wrongdoings…”(Moses, 2010). By analyzing self-blame, mental health clinicians have the capacity to minimize blame within a familial system and facilitate support structures which assist families with integration into the surrounding community. Moses hypothesized that parents who report higher levels of depression and caregiver burden as well as low levels of hope will report more self-blame and that lower perceptions of stigma coupled with greater social support may be associated with less self-blame in parents. In addition to these hypotheses, the study looked at the factors associated with increased levels of parental self-blame such as public stigma, biology/genetics, parents’ psychological well-being, parent demographic characteristics, and adolescents clinical characteristics. The study consisted of sixty-eight parents, biological and non-biological, of adolescents aged twelve to eighteen that had been diagnosed with one or more nonspecific mental disorders. The families were clients of a mental health program which provides case management to patients with functional impairments with the potential to be placed in more restrictive placements. The service acted

A total of 38 citations were identified, of which 8 publications focusing on the populations of England, France and Belgium met the eligibility criteria of this review. Evidence from existing research suggests that poor parenting outcomes in maternal psychiatric illness are strongly

Boursnell, M. (2011), completed a qualitative study exploring the unexplored lives of parents with mental illness. The literature also reviewed parents with mental illness that grew up with parents whom also has a mental illness or the parents could have experienced issues related to violence, abuse, and neglect during childhood. This article reviewed the lives of 23 parents. The parents participated in a study about their experiences of parenthood and mental illness. Participants were chosen based on the criteria of the nongovernment mental health services provided from clients who were parents of children between the ages of 0 and 18. All of the parents had experience of government mental health

Forgotten Kids are children that have disabilities that are barely visible. They have their arms and legs, can see and hear, run, play, etc., but most have never been invited to a birthday party or to a sleep over. They are the last to be chosen to play and the first to be blamed. Their illnesses aren’t fatal, but a small part of their hearts and souls die with every rejection. Their behaviors seem odd or unpredictable to themselves as much as to society. They are misunderstood and overlooked, thus the name “Forgotten Kids.” Maybe I can bring understanding by showing and providing insight into the life of a child struck with mental illness and hopefully people will realize that my child is just as special as the next.