The offsprings of mentally ill parents

Children of mentally ill parents have a well-known risk of de­velo­ping mental illnesses during their lives. This should be considered in clinical practice. The causes of such in­creased risk are represented partly by genetic in­flu­en­ces and partly by the adverse influence of the trau­ma­tic child­hood ex­pe­riences, that are very common in these fa­mi­lies, leading to child abuse. The genetic and the psy­cho­so­cial factors in­flu­ence each other. It has been pro­ven that half of the men­tally ill children and teenagers live with a mentally ill parent. Pre­na­tal and postnatal mental dis­or­ders of the mother in­flu­ence the development of the in­fant and the child, and are subsequently expressed by the appearance of a psy­chia­tric pathology in them. The microperspective fo­cu­ses on the immediate outcomes of the infant’s psychological func­tio­ning, while the macropers­pec­tive focuses on the psy­cho­path­ology that may oc­cur from infancy to adulthood in children of mothers with mental illness. The disruptive psy­chia­tric symptoms of pa­rents with severe mental illness may profoundly affect the lives of their children, leading to trau­ma­tic experiences in the childhood of their offsprings. These traumatic ex­pe­riences can influence the offsprings of pa­rents with se­vere men­tal illness into adulthood, in terms of self-per­cep­tion and attitudes towards themselves and so­ciety. Psy­cho­lo­gi­cal intervention programs have recently star­ted being im­ple­men­ted in some countries to support fa­mi­lies in which a parent suffers from a mental illness, to increase the protective factors guarding against the de­ve­lop­ment of men­tal illnesses in children. Such in­ter­ven­tions focus on the child­ren’s physical, social, emotional and intellectual needs, as well as on the parent-child rela­tion­ship.