Parenting Among Mothers With Bipolar Disorder: Strengths, Challenges, and Service Needs

ABSTRACT

Bipolar disorder is a severe form of mental illness with a primary disruption in mood. With fluctuating phases of mania and depression, bipolar disorder can have a serious impact on all activities of daily living, including parenting. Ten mothers with bipolar disorder were interviewed to understand their strengths, challenges, and service needs in parenting. Results describe their love for their children, problems in disciplining, and need for more support groups, among other findings. Interestingly, manic and hypomanic phases are reported to provide more energy to parent. Implications of the study for social work practice and research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Bipolar disorder
• challenges
• mothers
• parenting
• psychosis
• qualitative study
• service needs
• strengths

The authors would like to thank Dr. James Black, psychiatrist, for his help with recruitment of participants for this study, the dissertation committee for their comments on the dissertation, on which this article is based, and Dr. Mary K. Eamon for her comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This study was partly supported by a grant from the Graduate College and the Daniel Sanders Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Notes

This study also included interviewing children and collecting additional quantitative data on parenting from three families. Those findings will be reported elsewhere.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meenakshi Venkataraman

Meenakshi Venkataraman, PhD, is Assistant Professor, Division of Social Work, West Virginia University.

Barry J. Ackerson

Barry J. Ackerson, PhD, LCSW, is Associate Dean and MSW Program Director, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.