Factsheet: When a Parent Has a Mental Illness: From Risk to Resiliency--Protective Factors for Children

The Prevention Perspective

Whether or not children of parents with mental illness will develop social, emotional, or behavioral problems depends on a number of factors. These include the child's genetic vulnerability, the parent's behavior, the child's understanding of the parent's illness, and the degree of family stability (e.g., number of parent-child separations). Preventive interventions aimed at addressing these risk factors and increasing children's protective factors increase the likelihood that they will be resilient, and grow and develop in positive ways. Effective prevention strategies help increase family stability, strengthen parents' ability to meet their children's needs, and minimize children's exposure to negative manifestations of their parent's illness.[2]

Risk Factors

Children whose parents have a mental illness are at risk for developing social, emotional and/or behavioral problems. An inconsistent and unpredictable family environment, often found in families in which a parent has mental illness, contributes to a child's risk. Other factors that place all children at risk, but particularly increase the vulnerability of children whose parents have a mental illness, include:

• Poverty
• Occupational or marital difficulties
• Poor parent-child communication
• Parent's co-occurring substance abuse disorder
• Openly aggressive or hostile behavior by a parent
• Single-parent families

Families at greatest risk are those in which mental illness, a child with a difficult temperament, and chronically stressful family environments are all present. Many of these factors, however, can be reduced through preventive interventions. For example, poor parent-child communication can be improved through skills training, and marital conflict can be reduced through couples therapy.