Sections
Children of Parents With Psychiatric and Substance Abuse Disorders: Introduction | Clinical Presentation | A Prevention Intervention Perspective | Risk | Developmental Transactions | Resilience | Clinical Implications | Prevention Approaches in Families With Parental Depression | Prevention of Anxiety Disorders in Children | Prevention Programs for Children of Parents With Substance
Abuse Disorders | Clinical Implications: Addressing the General Concerns
of Parents, Parent and Child Skill Development, and Improving
Family Communication | Research Directions | Summary Points | References
Excerpt
In clinical practice, it is common to encounter
parents with either medical or psychiatric illness or both. Working
with parents with such illnesses provides an important opportunity
to help both parents and their children. In this chapter, we address
two areas. First, we discuss parental mental illness that places
families at higher risk for the development of disorder in children and
at the same time provides an important opportunity for preventive
intervention. Using children of parents with depression as a model,
we specifically discuss risk factors, protective factors, and resilience
and review prevention programs. We outline prevention programs that
have been developed for families with anxiety disorders and substance
abuse disorders. Second, we address directly what clinicians can
do when they encounter parents with mental illness in their practice, based
on both clinical experience and the research on preventive intervention.
We have not focused on medical illness, although we believe many
of the same principles apply, given many studies include parents
who have both mental and physical illness.