Mental health
About one in six adults in the UK experience some form of mental illness during their lifetime. It is likely that many of them are parents. Studies have shown that 10 per cent of all female patients have a child under one year old and that a quarter of women referred for mental health treatment have a child under five years old.
A wide range of Barnardo’s projects work with children and young people whose parents live with a mental illness. We estimate that in 2006/2007 Barnardo’s worked with 18,550 children and young people whose parents are affected by mental illness. We also supported approximately 8,750 parents with mental illnesses over the same period.
Barnardo’s offered:
- specialist therapies to help the family cope
- drop-in counselling for parents
- liaison with schools to make staff aware of the pressures a child may be experiencing at home
Barnardo’s projects recognise the strong link between parents’ and children’s welfare and aim to support both parents and children. By working in this way we can deliver lasting improvements for the whole family. Children can go unnoticed when a parent needs mental health treatment and the adult’s role as a parent is often forgotten.
In June 2008 Barnardo’s published Family Minded: Supporting children in families affected by mental illness (PDF) calling for professionals delivering children’s and adults’ services to ‘think family’ and work together to focus on the needs of the whole family when parents have mental health problems.
Drawing on the experience of Barnardo’s services, Family Minded calls for:
- age-appropriate information to help children understand and cope with their parent's mental illness
- child-friendly visiting facilities to be made available when parents are treated as hospital in-patients
- work to raise awareness of the stigma that can surround mental illness and understanding how this can prevent some families from asking for help
