Parenting

This document discusses how you can reduce your stress by taking care of your mental and emotional health. Working at staying healthy emotionally will reduce your stress; it might improve your mental health so you have fewer symptoms or less of a need for emergency interventions.

An important part of parenting is knowing what to expect from your child at any given age. As they grow, children change and acquire skills, and they require different things from you. This document highlights some of the things you might expect to see in your young child.

Visual abstract for the article entitled Child Protective Service Disparities and Serious Mental Illnesses: Results From a National Survey. Article written by Katy Kaplan et al. Psychiatric Services, 2019.

This fact sheet summarizes research on the trauma experienced by children when removed from the home due to a parent’s mental illness. It emphasizes the importance of minimizing trauma by providing appropriate support to both the child and parent.

The best way to prevent custody loss is to have a plan that helps consumers improve their parenting skills while managing their disability. This brief tool provides suggestions on how to create a plan to protect the best interests of your child and to demonstrate your maturity as a parent.

This document provides information on the unique challenges faced by parents with mental health conditions. It outlines common barriers, available support, and resources. It may be useful for consumers, providers, policymakers, and stakeholders.

Our first Peers in Practice document, written by Fred McLaren, MS, CPS, looks at the challenges of parenting with a mental health condition and the role Peer Specialists can play in supporting their clients with the needs and challenges of parenting.

Various factors such as discrimination, lack of supports, and high levels of stress can all lead to complications as a parent with a mental illness. During the webinar we will discuss strategies parents can use.

This brief fact sheet looks at the prevailing myths about parents with mental illnesses (e.g., that they are unwilling or unable to care adequately for their own children, etc.) with the evidence-based facts with regard to parenting performance and long-term outcomes a useful guide to consumers and advocates.

If you have a psychiatric disability, you will likely experience periods of remission, or times when your symptoms are not present. This document discusses what are relapses and why they happen, and provides tools and tips to preventing and planning for relapses.