TITLE:CHILDREN WHOSE PARENTS ARE MENTALLY ILL: A FORGOTTEN GROUP

Author:Cain-Jackson, Helen, MSW

Affiliation:Ohio Department of Mental Health

Children who have a mentally ill parent are at greater risk for future psychiatric and developmental disorders and are very isolated; maternal psychopathology has a greater impact on children due to the mother being the primary care giver, and their symptoms become a part of the child's daily environment. Friends, a program of support groups and retreats for children six to eighteen years of age whose parents are mentally ill was started in 1987. A pilot program was conducted in three groups for thirty-five children and proved to be successful in educating the children about their parent's illness, alleviating fears about the mental health system, and enhancing socialization and support for all of the children. This pilot program set the stage for future funding and focus on this group. The program was determined to be needed by case managers.

During the past ten years, this unique selective prevention program has served four hundred children via seventy support groups meeting six to eight sessions. The groups have been funded by the Ohio Department of Mental Health with grants ranging from $2,000 to $3,500 and enabled the mental health and other agencies to primarily pay for educational materials and fees for recreational and social activities. After The Tears, Teens Talk About Their Parent's Mental Illness and My Mom Still Loves Me, Good Weather or Not, both video-based curriculums, have been provided as resource materials to many of the funded groups via the department. The two- to three-day, annual, summer retreats, for forty to one hundred children from support groups throughout the state, are in a camp-like setting to provide the children a fun growth experience, to provide the parents respite from their children, and have been very well received. The children came from both rural and urban areas in Ohio and represented several ethnic and racial groups. In 1992, in an evaluation of the three-day retreats, the positive findings included but were not limited to the children's enhanced social skills, the reduction of isolation, and parents' pleasure with the program. Some of the ten outcomes are:

1.Improved relationships with parents and other siblings were shown in seventy percent of children who participated in the group;

2.There has been a reduction in hospitalization of parents whose children participated in the group. This was an outcome question for all group's final report.

3.Children who were educated about their parent's illness were less fearful of hospitals in particular and the mental health system (centers) in general as reported by fifty percent of the children.

4.Children who participated in the support groups were much more likely to seek and receive help within the system. Thirty (thirty percent) of the children were showing symptomatology during the support group sessions and were referred for help

5.The support group activities were continued by thirty percent after the funding from the department of mental health ceased, which showed a need and local support of this effort.

6.Reduced stigma of mental illness and isolation of these children has been shown to be a positive outcome of the Friends program in Ohio as expressed by group facilitators.