A strong reciprocal link exists between child and parental mental health. Troubled children are likely to have troubled parents, and vice versa. Parents and children are profoundly sensitive to each other’s emotional states, and the behaviors and difficulties of one person – child or parent – naturally affect others in the household.
Among mothers, major depression negatively affects their ability to meet the needs of their children and places children at significant risk for psychopathology and developmental problems. The problems found in children of depressed mothers include:
- Increased rates of clinical mental diagnoses.
- Impairments in psychological functioning.
- Difficulties in meeting social and academic demands.
- More internalizing and externalizing behaviors.
- Substantial risk for psychiatric diagnoses later in life.
Thus, any intervention aimed at mothers should consider strategies for reaching at-risk children.
To improve a family’s overall mental health status, certain factors associated with poor parental mental health need identification as well. These factors include:
- Economic hardship
- Single parenting
- Unemployment
Parents experiencing economic hardship are almost three and a half times more likely than those not experiencing hardship to report symptoms of poor mental health.
The “economic hardship” category includes items such as:
- Skipping a meal because there was not enough money to purchase food.
- Going without phone service for more than 24 hours.
While the majority of parents reporting this type of hardship are in the lower income ranges, parents reporting economic hardship are distributed through all income ranges. Thus, the immediate sources of economic stress may be different for low-income populations (inability to cover rent increase) versus middle/high income populations (inability to afford high mortgage and unanticipated home repairs).
Single parents who are not living with a partner are two times more likely than married parents to report symptoms of poor mental health.
Single parents face challenges raising children on their own, and these challenges may become risk factors for developing symptoms of poor mental health. Alternatively, adults with mental health problems may have difficulty sustaining relationships and therefore find themselves without a partner who is willing to share childrearing responsibilities.
Unemployed parents are more likely to experience symptoms of poor mental health than parents who are working full-time (36-45 hours per week).
Symptoms of poor mental health may occur for this group because they lack the structure, social networks, status, pride, activity, and supports that often accompany employment.
Incidence of mental illnesses among the low-income populations, poor people are much less likely to utilize mental health services for a variety of reasons:
- High costs
- Access to health insurance
- Geographic proximity (unreliable transportation)
- Lack of culturally sensitive practices
- Language barriers
- Stigma
- Lack of screening and misdiagnosis
Source: http://missourifamilies.org/cfb/briefs/mental.pdf
Author: Angela Miller
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