Grief experiences of parents whose children suffer from mental illness

To examine the grief experience of parents of adult children with a mental illness and its relationship to parental health and well-being and parent child attachment and affective relationship.

Participants were recruited from a variety of organizations throughout Australia that provide support services for sufferers of mental illness and/or for their families. Seventy-one participants (62 mothers and nine fathers) all of whom had a child diagnosed with mental illness volunteered to take part in the study. All completed measures of grief, health status and parent-child relationship.

Parents reported experiencing grief in relation to their child's illness as evidenced by intrusive thoughts and feelings and avoidance of behaviour as well as difficulties adapting to and distress associated with reminders of the illness. Parental grief appears to reduce over time, but only in some aspects of grief and after an extended period. Increased parental grief was related to lowered psychological well-being and health status and associated with an anxious/ambivalent and a negative affective parent-child relationship.

The study provides important insights into the grief experiences of parents following their child's diagnosis with mental illness. The significant relationship between parental grief and parental psychological well-being and health status as well as to parent-child relationship has important implications for health professionals. Foremost amongst these are the need to validate the distress and grief of parents and to better understand how to provide interventions that promote grief work and family bonds while reducing emotional distress and life disruption.