More and more families are experiencing mental health problems and when they do, services are often inadequate, with an over-reliance on medication, according to a report published today.
The Barnardos study highlights how “parental mental-health difficulties alone present little risk of significant harm to children”, but the “absence of supports for both parents and children can compromise the child’s ability to cope”.
The report, entitled Patients. Parents. People. Towards integrated supports and services for families experiencing mental health difficulties, outlines how mental-health problems are often treated “in isolation, without recognising patients as parents and tailoring treatment accordingly”.
It says there is a lack of co-ordination in how services are delivered and concerns over the “dominance of the medical model in mental-health treatment”.
“From our experience, parents taking benzodiazepines are not being adequately assessed to check its efficacy or whether it is still a suitable treatment,” it states.
“Barnardos has more than 40 services across the country and staff are reporting that poor mental health among parents is increasing in prevalence. Barnardos staff are also finding that when a parent experiences a mental-health difficulty and are not adequately supported or are receiving inappropriate treatment, their children can be affected. Staff also found that very few parents have adequate support for their mental health difficulty.”
The report claims that a key issue highlighted by staff is “the over-reliance on medication as the treatment for parents experiencing mental-health difficulties”, in what is described as a “shortcut solution” that can negatively affect their ability to parent.
Source: Noel Baker, Irish Examiner, 19/06/14
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