Factors that may Facilitate or Hinder a Family-Focus in the Treatment of Parents with a Mental Illness

Camilla Lauritzen, Charlotte Reedtz, Karin Van Doesum, Monica Martinussen

Children with mentally ill parents are at risk of developing mental health problems themselves. To enhance early support for these children may prevent mental health problems from being transmitted from one generation to the next. The sample (N = 219) included health professionals in a large university hospital, who responded to a web-based survey on the routines of the mental health services, attitudes within the workforce capacity, worker's knowledge on the impact of parental mental illness on children, knowledge on legislation concerning children of patients, experience, expectations for possible outcomes of change in current clinical practice and demographic variables. A total of 56 % reported that they did not identify whether or not patients had children. There were no significant differences between the groups (identifiers and non-identifiers) except for the two scales measuring aspects of knowledge, i.e., Knowledge Children and Knowledge Legislation where workers who identified children had higher scores. The results also showed that younger workers with a medium level of education scored higher on Positive Attitudes. Furthermore, workers who reported to have more knowledge about children and the impact of mental illness on the parenting role were less concerned about a child-focussed approach interfering with the patient-therapist relation.