Understanding the Parenting Experience of A Child With Mental Illness and the Construct of Parent Recovery within the Social Service and Court Communities

• Author: Thomas J. O'Connor
• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Date: 01 January 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12204

UNDERSTANDING THE PARENTING EXPERIENCE OF A CHILD

WITH MENTAL ILLNESS AND THE CONSTRUCT OF PARENT

RECOVERY WITHIN THE SOCIAL SERVICE AND COURT

COMMUNITIES

Thomas J. O’Connor

The Courts manage a child with mental illness as an invested yet impersonal steward of change or supervision. An invested

parent is the true personal steward of that child’s welfare. That stewardship can create trauma over time and therefore benefit

from technical supports to sustain attention, hope, and vitality. This article is a perspective-based article detailing the psycho-

logical experience of parenting the adolescent and young adult child with a mental illness and presents the current construct of

‘recovery’ as an evidence-based method to enhance parent competency.

Practitioner’s Key Points:

Persons working within the court systems that manage families raising a child with a mental illness need to understand

each families’ basic resource needs.

Properly training and supporting parents of a child with mental illness can lessen the burden of other court and social

service resources in servicing these families.

Understanding the construct of recovery in managing mental illness provides professionals working within the court

systems with new tools to deliver better outcomes.

Keywords: Mental Illness; Parents; Psychiatry; Recovery; Training; and Trauma.

INTRODUCTION

Understanding the impact of a child’s mental illness on a parent, through the prism of state judicia-

ries and social service systems, is as confounding as it is evocative. It is confounding because a con-

sensus is required by all parties (judges, attorneys, advocates) on what is lawful and safe for the child

and a functional family unit to serve the best interests of that child. (Supposedly, such a family unit is

functional if it is managing its affairs—economic hazard, disabilities, accessing public accommoda-

tions, etc.—without the services of the court, though the mentalcapabilities of its members impact that

effectiveness, and open to review if it fails.) It is evocative because that very review elicits diverse

opinions about parental rights, privacy,public safety, and the economic politics of social safety nets.

The constellation of authorities, qualified voices, and interested parties come together to review

and/or adjudicate a child/adolescent/young adult matter before the court; a mental illness, as a trait of

that person, is meaningful if some greater consideration regarding the person’s welfare or public

safety is at stake. But these contemplations, legal or otherwise, are not personal engagements of their

subject. The welfare of the person with the mental illness may be central, but within the scope of the

legal requirement to do so—not the personal or intimate commitment to desire to do so—that is the

stewardship of parenting. It is the parent that lives the experience of that stewardship day to day and,

in extreme cases, night to night.

The legal and social systems that require a parent to appear and perform on behalf of the child

expect them to take this responsibility as a solemn oath. In my experience, all parents take on every

medical or behavioral challenge of their child and anticipate a solution when applying a full dose of

Correspondence: toc@trustdfs.com; www.linkedin.com/in/parentnavigator

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 54 No. 1, January 2016 61–67

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C2016 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts