IIt was during a recent family trip to Dorset that Alison Miller first realized her daughter was seriously ill. The family was having lunch in a gastropub on the coast and the 13-year-old girl excused herself and had not returned for a long time. Miller, 4, from south-east London, snuck into the women’s toilets to look for her and found the Teen huddled in a cubicle. She “she was sitting on the floor, screaming and rocking because someone had activated the hand dryer.”
The mother of two says that before the pandemic, her daughter was a confident high achiever. Within months of lockdown, had become plagued by anxiety and extreme phobias. Now 15, her daughter suffers from symptoms of serious mental illness including dissociation, hearing voices and developmental regression. “My young man, once capable, independent and intelligent, is a disaster. I can’t let her go to the stores alone, she’s very vulnerable now,” says Miller. the independent.
Dealing with her daughter’s illness radically changed Miller’s life and, in turn, sparked her own. mental health struggles “If she has a bad day, I fall in love a lot. Her well-being is tied to what’s going on with them. My anxiety and stress levels were through the roof, she didn’t sleep forever and I woke up at 3 am on the phone with the Samaritans saying I didn’t know how to help her. I do not recognize my own life. I’ve had to give up everything that made me me.”
Then there is the pain. “The feeling of helplessness, that something terrible is happening and you have no control over it and there are no easy solutions is really depressing and painful. There is this grieving process of coming to terms with the loss of the child that you have,” says Miller. Her daughter is now receiving therapy and drug treatment, but the effect her condition has had on family life has been palpable.
The impact on parents whose children have mental health problems is rarely discussed. And yet, the adage that a parent can only be as happy as her unhappiest child feels ever more relevant. With children’s mental health at an all-time low, thanks to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns in their development and socialization, the connection is becoming more apparent than ever. Parents caring for increasingly sick children are seeing their own mental health deteriorate, reporting symptoms of depression, anxiety, and detachment that they have never experienced before.
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It is inevitable that a child’s mental health is affected by the well-being of their parents; the mood in the home and the ability of a mother or father to parent well has a profound impact, but new research from the University of Waterloo in the US has shown how that relationship is even more likely to work the other way. Dillon Browne, a professor of clinical psychology at the university and lead author of the study on Families and Mental Health During the Pandemic, found that parents actually react negatively toward a child struggling with mental health. “Mental health struggles between families exacerbate each other in a feedback loop,” he explains. “Our study suggests that the direction of influence appears to be from the child’s mental health to paternitynot parenting for children’s mental health.”
The finding raises big questions for parents who report their own struggles as a result of raising a child who experiences a psychological crisis suddenly, often unexpectedly.
Andrea*, 45, from Cambridgeshire, said she had experienced great pressure on her mental health and that of her entire family due to the changes she had witnessed in her 14-year-old daughter, which had been exacerbated by long lists of waiting. for NHS mental health support.
“My daughter has gone from being a happy teenager to anxiety, self-harm, suicide attempts, and now refusing to go to school, in just one year. Some of this may be normal teenage stuff, but either way her family is at sea. It affects every moment of my waking life. You’re stuck at home wondering what the hell to do and wondering if it’s just you.”
It leaves me feeling teary and beat up. It’s hard to break the cycle
For others, the shift to poor mental health has been more visceral. Anna Blewett, 41, from Colchester, says her 10-year-old daughter developed tics and other anxiety symptoms during the pandemic, and that had a profound effect on her own stability. “It has been disheartening to see my son wrapped up in anxious thoughts and worries. He sometimes feels like a quagmire that draws us all in,” she says. “As a parent, he worries that you’re doing enough to protect your child from stressors, or if you’re just giving in to them.”
Blewett says she worried about whether or not to force her daughter out of the house, on a trip to a supermarket “which is causing her to hyperventilate and gag,” or instead “wrap her up” to protect her from her pain, the entire weather. she doubting her own abilities as a mother. “I’m not really prone to introspection or rumination, but some days I feel like I can’t do anything right, and that’s really exhausting. My partner and I talk about her situation all the time. Sometimes it leaves me feeling tearful and beat up. It’s hard to break the cycle.”
According to Dr. Dora Bernardes, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of Exeter, the family unit is a complex and interrelated system and any small change within that system will affect everyone within it. “If one person is not well, it will affect the whole family,” she says. “We can feel scared, worried about them, we can feel powerless as parents and rejected, and that can trigger our own worries. Parents will very often feel guilty and that they are failing. They may feel a strong sense of shame.”
Parents’ instinct to fix a child’s problem, to “take care of our puppies,” as Bernardes puts it, means that when a problem arises that simply can’t be fixed, it can make parents feel inadequate and depressed. themselves.
For Jessica*, 44, from West Sussex, whose children struggled during lockdown, particularly falling asleep and becoming anxious, their well-being dropped significantly. “She developed real problems coping and at times she was almost suicidal,” she says. “In particular, I noticed a social problem: paranoia that people didn’t like her and high social anxiety.” She chose to take antidepressants, but she also uses exercise to help her cope with her feelings and feel physically stronger.
The number of parents who need additional support for their own mental health is increasing, according to child and educational psychologist Dr. Jen Wills Lamacq, who works with students at the school and their families. Schools report that the pandemic has hit parenting hard, taking some families from barely coping to really struggling. She says that a first step in addressing this issue is for parents to validate their own feelings; admit that they are affected by their child’s illness, which is natural, understandable and expected.
As parents, we are somehow expected to be these endless containers that handle everything our children throw at us.
“As parents, we are somehow expected to be these endless containers that handle everything our kids throw at us,” she says. “As a parent, the responsibility always stops with you, but during the pandemic that really became apparent to many parents. We have not gotten rid of that feeling of isolation and the horror of feeling really alone.
For parents who notice a decline in their own well-being, Dr. Wills Lamacq recommends three steps: notice what events or problems in the family home trigger your own negative feelings; take time away from children; and seek support, either formal support through therapy or support from parents or local family members.
After the lockdown, many parents, and especially mothers, abandoned the habit of finding time for themselves, and this is even more difficult when caring for a child with mental problems. Going back to the hobbies you enjoyed before 2020 can help you regain a sense of normalcy and calm. “These things fell out of our daily lives and it’s about being proactive in thinking about whether they can be recovered and doing what’s really hard: asking for help,” says Dr. Lamacq.
To deal with her own feelings, Blewett has found some successful coping mechanisms outside of the home. “When home feels like an eggshell hike, I take solace in simple physical labor: beating the weeds in the plot; remove the contents of the compost bin and put it back; go for a run,” she explains. She has also found support by talking to friends, with and without children, about what she is experiencing.
Dr. Maria Loades, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Bath, advises parents under pressure to “do the basics first” – eat right, get as much sleep as possible and get some form of physical activity every day. She is also encouraged therapy to help understand and manage her emotions. This is easier to do today as there are many free resources online, such as the parenting guide produced by Emerging Minds at the University of Oxford.
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There is also something else to consider: how dangerous it is to merge the feelings of adults with those of their children. According to counselor Louise Tyler, modern parents have become “entangled” with their children, a process she believes has gone too far with parents “as if getting into their angst with them,” she says. The answer is not to unplug, she says, but to find a “happy medium.”
Talking openly about the effect living with a child dealing with mental illness can have on parents has also been a source of comfort and reassurance.
For Miller, a parenting course called Family Connections was a “game changer.” She helped her accept that her daughter and her own life had changed, but that didn’t mean happiness couldn’t return for both of them. She also found support online through other parents facing the same challenges, as part of the Parenting Mental Health Facebook group.
The group’s membership doubled from 2019 to 2020, and again from 2020 to 2021. Throughout the pandemic, it has grown from 6,000 to 25,000 members. When its members were asked what helped them gain a sense of perspective and establish their own mental health, most said they found solace and empathy online through a peer support group. Members also recommended talking openly with friends and family, spending time away from the family home, acts of self-care, and spending time alone.
Being open has certainly helped Miller. “The more I open up to people, the more good things come my way,” she says. “That group has taught me that self-care doesn’t have to be going to the spa for a day, it can be sitting down with a cup of coffee, it can just say no to something to take the pressure off.”
