Resources - Parental Mental Health Issues

Action 16 review - Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for parents with Mental Health Needs and their Children.
Barnardo's Keeping the Family in Mind Resource Pack (PDF file), including a video and young carers pack explaining mental health with their own drawings etc. For further details email louise.wardale@barnardos.org.uk
Being Seen and Heard . Royal College of Psychiatrists. A training package providing practical and creative suggestions about working with children and parents. It contains clips of children, young people and their parents talking about their experiences of mental illness and how professional can work effectively with them.
Checklist for professionals coming into contact with the children of parents with mental health problems, Royal College of Psychiatrists
Children of Parents with a Mental Illness (COPMI), Australian website containing a range of many helpful downloadable resources.
Disabled Parents Network -The Disabled Parents Network is a nationalnetwork of and for disabled people who are parents, or hope to become parents, and their families, friends and supporters.
The Disabled Parents Network welcomes all parents, including those with physical disabilities,sensory impairments, learning difficulties, long term illnesses, or mental health issues.The Disabled Parents Network has developed information briefings for disabled parents, and provides advice and peer support.
Does severe mental illness run in the family?, Rethink
Explaining Alzheimer's to Children Advice Sheet (Alzheimer's Society)
Family Minded - Barnardo's report supporting children in families affected by mental illness.
How to parent when you are in crisis (Mind 2004)
Making Time to Talk Leaflet: Information for parents (NSF Scotland)
Mind out for Mental Health - a hands-on organisation with a considerable proportion of its staff engaged in the day-to-day care of members or helping with the issues that affect the wellbeing of their carers
Parental Mental Health Problems: messages from research, policy and practice . Research into Practice. By Jo Tunnard 2004
Parental mental illness - the problems for children (PDF file), Mental Health and Growing Up series, Second Edition, The Royal College of Psychiatrists 1999
Parents in Hospital: How mental health services can best promote family contact when a parent is in hospital. Barnados, June 2007. A stay in hospital can represent a significant crisis, not just in terms of a parent’s individual mental health but of family life overall, and may have long term repercussions beyond the period of hospitalisation itself. The findings of this report suggest that this can be re-framed as an opportunity for services to provide more holistic care.
Parenting in Poor Environments, a research study focussing on the issue of parental stress, by Policy Research Bureau, 2002.
Parents with mental health problems. Mental Health Foundation 2007. Brief resource aimed at professionals, children and parents.
Sanctuary Issue 2 - Inner Space for Women's Mental Well-being - contains an article on postnatal depression. For more information on Sanctuary, please contact Megan Aspel
SCIE Research Briefing 23: Stress and Resilience Factors in parents with mental health problems and their children. This briefing focuses on factors contributing to either stress or resilience in families where one or both parents have mental health problems. It considers the position of parents and children focusing upon issues of stress or resilience arising from individual and ‘informal’ sources. While recognising the role that services have in mediating either stress or resilience, the briefing does not consider service interventions or evaluations, as these are the subject of a SCIE systematic review to be published separately. Published March 2008.
SCIE Social Care TV: Videos on Parental Mental Health and Child Welfare
Still waiting for an answer (order form 997kb PDF file) - A short film documenting the development of the Parental Mental Health Service illustrating how a pragmatic approach to service design and partnership work can respond to the needs of families where a carer has a mental health problem.
Central and North West London Mental Health NHS Trust in partnership with NSPCC are keen to promote this model that won a commendation from the Secretary of State for Health for excellence in healthcare management in 2004.
As well as the film a range of support is available to agencies interested in developing a similar type of provision that includes clinic-based open mornings, facilitated workshops and consultation. For more information contact Amynta Cardwell Clinical Strategy Manager.
Supporting Parents: messages from research, by David Quinton, Research in Practice, 2004.
The father I had (article on Daily Express website)
Growing up with a manic depressive father, Martin Townsend experienced the torment and dread that his father's mood swings brought. Now Editor of the Sunday Express, he has written a sad, touching but, above all, fond memoir of the man he loved and admired – in spite of his illness.
Troubled Lives - Psychiatric morbidity in children living with psychotic parents, Department of Child and Family Psychiatry. Falkov, A. (1995), London:UMDS & West Lambeth
The psychological effects of parental mental health on children experiencing disaster, 2003 Emine Zinnur Kilic, Halise Devrimci Ozguven, Iaik Sayil.
Working together to support disabled parents This report shows how to develop inter agency protocols to support families in which parents have additional needs related to physical and/or sensory impairments, learning disabilities, mental health, drug and alcohol-related problems or serious illnesses. Jenny Morris and Michele Waites. March 2008.
Working with Men in Health and Social Care. Book written by practitioners and academics, this book brilliantly links theory, policy and practice. After exploring the theory and politics of masculinity, the authors move to practice models; work with men as individuals and in groups, in families and communities. They then look at work with different types of males; fathers, abusive men, boys and young men, older men, men who suffer physical or mental impairment. This thought provoking and topical book is essential reading for students and academics in social work, health care, probation, counselling and allied disciplines - and for practitioners. Order online

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