Can Untreated Mental Illness Affect Your Parenting Skills in a Negative Way?

Being a parent is probably the most important job in the world. To parent children effectively, it is best when parents become good role models for them to follow. That said, parenting takes time, effort and hands-on experience to develop positive parenting skills. As many as one-in-five people develop mental health problems. This can include emotional disturbance like chronic anxiety. Can a Parent's Mental Illness Impact Parenting Skills? Some parents, teachers and caregivers wonder if their own untreated mental illness can affect their parenting skills in a negative way. Some mental health experts, from the Raleigh and Triangle Area, caution that untreated mental illness can indeed play a huge role in how a person handles those critically important parenting responsibilities over time. In other words, parental untreated mental illness negatively impacts children in a number of critical ways. Do Kids of Mentally Ill Parents Develop Mental Issues Too? Mental health experts warn that kids who have a mentally ill parent are at significantly higher risk for developing mental issues sometime in their lifetimes than children of parents without mental illness. Studies show that the reasons for these alarming statistics are far more complex than a simple statistic ratio. Mental illness can be put on a continuum line, and multiple factors help determine when or if a child will become mentally ill in the future. Just like with other health conditions, individuals struggling with mental illness will all react and respond to treatment in different ways. What is important now is to at least identify any possible parental mental illness early on. What Causes Mental Illness - Genetics or Environment? Mental health professionals have long debated whether mental illness is caused by genetics or if environmental factors were the cause. The reality seems to favor both a hereditary predisposition and/or environmental factors that interact together to cause development of mental health symptoms. Do Mentally Ill Parents Get Their Kids Taken Away? As humans with intense emotions, we tend to fear what we do not understand. This is at the heart of the continuing stigma of mental illness. Parents are often fearful of seeking out appropriate mental health psychotherapy or other psychiatric treatment when needed. Ongoing emotional distress or mental health issues can become too much to handle. Even so, parents are often afraid and reluctant to get professional help, because they fear that authorities will automatically come to take their children away. Nothing could be further from the truth. Seeking Professional Mental Health Services Indicates Responsible Parenting Television shows and movies tend to overly exaggerate mental illness symptoms and behaviors. The fact is that seeking professional mental health services indicates that a parent is acting responsibly. Life today is incredibly busy, and all of that increased stress and activity tends to create even more problems. Parents today should not feel shame, guilt or fear if struggling with some sort of mental health condition. A compassionate team of mental health therapists offering effective family psychotherapy counseling is there to help. Additionally, parents can undergo a psychiatric assessment with a knowledgeable Raleigh, North Carolina based psychiatrist to determine if psychiatric medications are needed. Find Effective Family Psychotherapy and/or Support Groups Mental health treatment has come a long way since its relatively recent explosion into communities across the nation and beyond. Many mental health services also offer other helpful treatment options like finding a good community support group. These services include:

• Parenting support groups & children's groups

• Family Counseling

• DNA testing for possible hereditary mental health disease indicators

• Psychiatric medication management

• TelePsychiatry services

• Individual counseling

Psychiatric Services Can Help Parents Cope Better & Heal Parents are often truly amazed when they discover how helpful that psychiatric services can be for managing daily life. Simply having someone there to listen can bring immense relief. Professional psychiatric counseling and related services can help parents learn and practice better coping strategies that really work. Parents and children can find sound guidance and advice on dealing with tough issues they face and ways to move forward towards healing. Hope & Healing for Parents Dealing with Mental Illness There is no time like the present to reach out and ask for help. Find a supportive mental health therapist who can help you navigate parenting and mental illness treatment today. At MedPsych Integrated in Raleigh, there is no reason to make this journey towards hope and healing alone. Learn how to improve parenting skills. Whether in Briar Creek or Triangle, a kind an dedicated team of mental health experts are waiting to help. Read more blog articles here.