Parents’ Experience of Their Child's First Psychiatric Breakdown: “Welcome to Hell”

Abstract

Clinicians and researchers have emphasized the importance of helping the primary caregivers of persons going through the first outbreak of psychiatric illness in order to mitigate the negative consequences of the illness on the patient and the caregivers. The aim of the current qualitative, retrospective study is to examine the experiences, challenges, and difficulties faced by Israeli parents during the outbreak of psychiatric illness in their children. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 parents who participated in a psycho-educational group in a family mental health center. Several themes regarding parents’ experience of the first outbreak of their children's psychiatric illness emerge from the content analysis of the interviews—the perception of sudden onset of the illness, feelings of being mired in distress, intense pain stemming from guilt and helplessness with concomitant anger, and isolation. The themes are then discussed in light of the concept of ambiguous loss and the existential approach. The findings indicate psycho-social services in the Israeli mental health system provide only a partial response to the needs of parents during this critical period.

Keywords:

• parents of mentally ill
• outbreak of mental illness
• family and mental illness
• caregivers and mental illness