Parenting with Mental Illness: Challenges and Impact

According to the National Alliance of Mental Health, mental illness affects one in five Americans today (2015). A mental illness is defined as a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder that affects a person’s daily life. The issue today is to understand a parent that suffers from a mental disorder. In United States studies, forty percent of children have parents that have been hospitalized due to mental illness (Lauritzen, 2015). Parents with a mental disorder require special attention to ensure that they are providing their children the proper care. Parents have the extra responsibility of taking care of their children while dealing with their own mental illness. Stigma is associated with mental disorders, which causes the parent or guardian not to seek help for fear of losing their children (Cleary, Deacon, Jackson, & Andrew, 2012). The issue of parents with mental illnesses is controversial because it requires the proper attention to ensure that children are growing in a safe environment. Children who have parents with mental illnesses are at risk of developing mental health complications as well (Lauritzen, 2015).

The stigma that is associated with mental illness can cause harm to the parent, and tends to work against each family. The family type, such as a single parent home or a nuclear family, will have different pulls with a parent that has an illness. A nuclear family tends to have the back up of a partner or a spouse, while the single parent does not have the support of a spouse (Lauritzen, 2015). The world view of mental illness ties in with the religious views of mental illness. The paper will explore the stigma and religious aspects of mental illness. The last selection of the paper will talk about the policies that can either help or harm a parent with a mental