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Children in families with a severely mentally ill member. Prevalence and needs for support
Margareta Ostman1, Lars Hansson
1Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychiatry, University Hospital, 22185 Lund, Sweden.
Insights
Children of mentally ill parents often need support, but only half receive it. Healthy spouses also require more care, highlighting the urgent need for integrated family support in mental health services.
Area of Science:
- Psychiatry
- Family Studies
- Social Work
Background:
- Investigated the needs of children and spouses in families with a severely mentally ill member.
- Examined the quality of mental health services in Sweden across multiple years (1986, 1991, 1997).
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the support needs of minor children and spouses within families affected by severe mental illness.
- To evaluate the extent to which these needs were met by psychiatric services.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a multi-centre study design in Sweden.
- Employed semi-structured questionnaires to interview relatives of psychiatric inpatients.
- Collected data on family burden, support needs, participation in care, and the situation of minor children.
Main Results:
- A consistent proportion of psychiatric patients were parents to minor children, with a decreasing trend in child custody.
- Female patients were more frequently parents and held custody more often.
- Majority of children had unmet support needs due to parental illness; healthy spouses reported increased burden and need for support.
Conclusions:
- There is an urgent need for psychiatric services to integrate parental issues into treatment and rehabilitation programs.
- Ensuring the specific needs of minor children in mentally ill families are met requires proactive service initiation.
- Support for healthy spouses is crucial for family well-being.
Background:
The prevalence of minor children in families with a severely mentally ill member, these children's needs for support and the situation of the spouses were investigated as part of a multi-centre study of the quality of the mental health services in Sweden performed in 1986, 1991 and 1997.
Methods:
The sample was drawn from relatives of compulsorily and voluntarily admitted inpatients to acute psychiatric wards. The instrument used was a semi-structured questionnaire, interviewing relatives about the burden of relatives, their needs for support and participation in care and items concerning the situation of the under-aged children in these families.
Results:
The results over the years investigated showed the same proportion of patients admitted to hospital who were also parents to minor children and a decreasing proportion of patients who had the custody of their children. Female patients were more often a parent and also more often had the custody of the children. The majority of the children had needs for support caused by their parent's illness and these needs were met in half of the cases. The healthy spouses in families with minor children more often had to give up their own occupation and to a higher extent experienced own needs for care and support from psychiatric services compared to spouses without minor children.
Conclusions:
The study supports that there is an urgent need for the psychiatric services to initiate parental issues in programmes for treatment and rehabilitation to ensure that the specific needs of minor children are met.