Chronic Parental Mental Illness

This overview discusses various chronic mental illnesses, psychotic and non-psychotic, and how they affect parenting in the peripartum period. Focus is given to the effects of chronic parental mental illness on young children’s development. The factors that exacerbate or ameliorate parenting risk are presented, along with a model to better understand how chronic parental mental illness affects pathways of parents and children. The chapter also emphasizes the need to humanize mental disorders and to engage families in supportive interventions than can mitigate the effects of mental illness, stigma, silence, and shame and on parents, children, and whole families.