There is a pervasive assumption that mental illness equates
to dangerousness and violence as it applies to parenting. We examine this
assumption and present a comprehensive literature review of how issues of
mental illness impact violence and dangerousness. A range of issues is
explored, including the unpredictability of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia,
stress from mental health problems inhibiting emotional stability, and past
in-patient hospitalizations for suicide attempts as they impact parenting. Risk
mitigation strategies are also presented.
Practitioner's Key Points:
- While
the stress and difficulties of living with a mental illness certainly
present challenges for any parent to overcome, this article answers the
larger question, “Does having a mental illness equate with being an unfit
parent?”
- In
order to explore what makes an unfit parent, it is necessary to first
operationalize what skills, traits, and abilities fit parents possess. The
article offers a summary of what it means to be a fit parent.
- For an
individual with mental illness, there may be a risk of unfit parenting or
violence. But we can only understand the actuality when we look at the
severity of the mental illness, environmental stressors, and additional
risk factors.
- We offer
a constellation of protective approaches to better assess the risk by
attending to competent risk factors, rather than making broad assumptions
concerning mental illness and the ability to parent or proclivity to
behave in a violent fashion.
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