Children & parentsFor someone close80 min read

When a parent has a mental illness: supporting the child and the teenager

A mother who no longer gets up, a father in hospital, a parent who drinks or hears voices: many children grow up alongside a parent who has a mental illness, and most of them will not develop that parent's illness. This guide explains what the child goes through, what research has established about the risk and about what protects against it, and how to talk to the child about the illness according to their age, get through a hospital admission, keep the child from becoming the family's carer and protect their life as a child. It offers an eight-week plan and says when to seek help.

Reviewed on October 25, 2026
Dr Zayan Al-Falasi, psychiatrist

In short

Depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorder, alcohol or drugs, disorders after a birth: when a parent is ill, the child sees, imagines and often keeps quiet. This guide starts from what research has shown: the risk for the child is raised without being a fate, protective factors add up, understanding what is happening helps the child not to carry their guilt and fears alone, and treating the parent also helps the child. It offers words for explaining the illness to a young child, to a schoolchild and to a teenager, describes what to plan before a hospital admission or a crisis, helps you recognise a child who is carrying too much, and devotes one section to the ill parent themselves, then another to the other parent and to family and friends. Finally, it presents the forms of help that have been evaluated, the signs that should raise concern and the situations in which the child's safety comes before everything else.

Topic: Children & parents · Depression & mood · Psychosis
Who it's for: For someone close
Languages: FR · EN · DE · IT · ES · ZH · AR

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The programme

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace a consultation. If a parent talks about dying or about harming their child, if they have begun to harm themselves, or if they are saying things about their child that have no connection with reality, first get the child to safety, then call the emergency services in your country. If it is the child or teenager who talks about dying or is harming themselves, do not leave them alone and seek help the same day; a suicide prevention line can also advise you, and it is useful to look up the one in your country right now. If you think a child is being abused or seriously neglected, contact the child protection services in your country. This guide recommends no medication and does not replace the advice of the professionals treating the parent or of those treating the child. Allow an hour to read.

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1. Before you begin

Léa is five. Since the start of the school year, her mother has stayed in bed almost all day. It is a neighbour who takes Léa to school in the morning, and in the evening her mother sometimes cries in the kitchen, thinking nobody can see her. Nobody has explained anything to Léa. In the end she found an explanation on her own: her mummy is sad because she, Léa, was nasty to her little brother. Since then, she has been tidying her room without being asked, she no longer makes any noise and she no longer asks for a bedtime story. At school, her teacher thinks she has become very well behaved.

Hugo is fifteen, and his father has schizophrenia. He has been admitted to hospital twice, and Hugo recognises better than anyone the days when he is unwell: he closes the shutters, talks in a low voice about neighbours who are supposedly spying on him, and stops sleeping. On those days, Hugo does the shopping, makes his little sister's meal and checks that his father has taken his treatment. He has not talked about it to any of his friends, and he no longer invites them round. He read on the internet that the illness is hereditary, and every time he sleeps badly, he wonders whether it is starting in him.

In these two stories, the child has understood that something serious is going on, nobody has told them what, and they have found their own answers alone: guilt for Léa, responsibility and fear for Hugo. The adults around them could change a great deal without being specialists: Léa's father, Hugo's grandmother, a teacher, and the ill parent themselves when they are better. If you are that parent, section 9 speaks to you directly.

Three things, straight away.

A child whose parent has a mental illness is not condemned to do badly. Their risk of having difficulties themselves is higher than that of other children, and it should be taken seriously. But this risk is not a fate: many of these children are doing well, and most will not develop their parent's illness (section 3).

What protects a child lies to a large extent in the hands of the adults around them. Understanding what is happening to their parent in words suited to their age, being able to count on at least one stable adult, keeping their routines, their school, their friends and their activities, and seeing their parent receive treatment: these protective factors are known, several of them add up, and none of them requires being a specialist (section 4).

It is nobody's fault, and least of all the child's. It is the first thing a child needs to hear, and often the one people forget to tell them. Silence does not protect them: it leaves them alone with what they imagine, and what they imagine is often heavier than reality (section 5).

2. What a child goes through when a parent is ill

A child does not see a diagnosis. They see a parent who changes, a home that changes, and adults who talk in low voices. Understanding what the child perceives, what they conclude from it and what they keep to themselves is the starting point for everything that follows.

What the child sees

Depending on the illness and the moment, the child sees a parent who stays in bed and no longer plays, an irritable parent who shouts over nothing and then feels bad about it, a parent who no longer sleeps and throws themselves into outsized projects, a parent who is afraid of things that nobody else can see, or a parent whose mood changes in the evening, after drinking. The child also sees what changes around them: meals at odd times, an ambulance one evening, grandparents moving in, the other parent worn out.

In practice, children often notice these changes much earlier than adults think. The meta-synthesis published by Dam and Hall in 2016, which brings together twenty-two qualitative studies on the lives of children with a parent who has a severe mental illness, describes children who are worried, who feel responsible for their parent and who stay attentive to what that parent is going through.

What the child imagines

When nobody explains, the child fills the silence with explanations of their own. In a Canadian study conducted by Mordoch with children aged six to sixteen living with a parent who had depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, the children understood the illness poorly and had been given few factual explanations, which caused them distress that could have been spared them. A few thoughts come back very often.

"It's my fault." In practice, this is a very common idea in young children, who readily believe they are the cause of what happens around them: they were disobedient, they made too much noise, they thought something nasty one day when they were angry. Among the best-studied prevention programmes, those of the American psychiatrist William Beardslee make reducing this guilt one of their explicit aims.

"My parent is going to die." In Mordoch's study, this was the main fear of the youngest children. A parent who no longer gets up or who leaves in an ambulance can seem, in a child's eyes, to be on the point of disappearing.

"I'm going to turn out like him." The older ones also feared falling ill in their turn. In practice, some little ones even wonder whether the illness can be caught, like a cold, by kissing their parent.

"He doesn't love me any more." A parent who has withdrawn into themselves, who no longer responds or who flares up, can give the child the impression that they have stopped mattering to that parent.

"It's up to me to make him better." Some children think that if they are good enough, funny enough or present enough, their parent will get better, and they work at it until they are worn out.

What the child does not dare to ask

Many children keep quiet, and their silence does not mean they are fine. Dam and Hall's meta-synthesis shows that they are often ashamed when their parent behaves differently, that they hide their family life for fear of being judged or bullied, and that they put their own needs after their parent's. A review of thirty-two studies, published by Dobener and colleagues in 2022, shows that stigma, that is, the negative way in which mental illness is viewed, also reaches these children "by association": they are teased, or fear being teased, and sometimes end up believing themselves that their family is something to be ashamed of.

On top of this comes a more secret fear. The guide "Think child, think parent, think family", from SCIE, the British reference body for social work, observes that children hesitate to speak because they fear being separated from their family, and that parents hesitate to ask for help because they fear losing custody of their children. This twofold fear keeps the whole family silent; section 9 explains why asking for support, on the contrary, protects the bond between the child and their parent. Finally, clinicians often meet children who feel that talking about the illness would amount to betraying a parent they love and defend: that is one more reason to talk about it without ever running the person down.

Two ways of coping

The children interviewed by Mordoch and Hall in 2008 describe two ways of adapting, often used in turn. The first consists in keeping watch over their parent and adjusting their own behaviour to the parent's, so as to keep the bond despite the illness. The second consists in putting a protective distance between themselves and the illness, outside, at friends' homes or in their activities, so as not to be overwhelmed. Both are understandable. A study by Fraser and Pakenham, published in 2009 with adolescents aged twelve to seventeen, adds a useful nuance: young people who felt connected to others adjusted better, whereas those who coped mainly through avoidance or by disengaging adjusted less well. One can take from this that a distance which preserves a life of one's own helps the child; a flight that cuts them off from everyone does not.

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What the rest contains

3. What the research says
4. What protects a child
5. Talking to the child about the illness
6. When the parent is in hospital or in crisis
7. When the child becomes the carer
8. Letting the child be a child
9. If you are the parent who has a mental illness
10. If you are the other parent, a grandparent or someone close
11. School and other adults
12. Signs that a child is not doing well, and how to respond
13. Particular situations
14. Forms of help that have been evaluated
15. When to seek help, and from whom
16. Eight weeks, step by step
17. Frequently asked questions
18. Key points
19. Sources and foundations

Frequently asked questions

Will my child develop the same illness as their parent? Their risk is higher than that of other children, but most children of ill parents do not develop their parent's illness. When they do have difficulties, these are often anxiety or depressive disorders, which can be treated. What helps them today is understanding, being surrounded by supportive people and having a life of their own.

My child is too young to understand. Do I really need to talk to them about it? Yes, in words suited to them. Even very young children perceive changes, and if they are given no explanation, they invent one, often based on their own guilt. A few simple sentences, repeated, are enough.

Should I take my child to see their parent in hospital? It depends on their age, on whether they want to go, on the parent's condition and on the setting, and no rule applies to everyone. Prepare the visit, keep it short, have an adult the child knows go with them, and never force them (section 6).

If I talk to my psychiatrist about my children, could they be taken away from me? This fear is common and understandable, and section 9 answers it in detail. The British SCIE guide asks professionals to explain to parents that identifying a need for support should serve to avoid child protection measures, not to trigger them. Nobody can promise that no measure will ever be taken, because professionals must act if a child is in danger, and these situations are described in section 13. Outside them, talking to your team about your children early serves above all to put support in place.

My teenager helps me a lot, and says they enjoy it. Is that a problem? Not necessarily: helping can make a young person proud and bring people closer. What counts is that they keep their schooling, their friends, their sleep and their leisure time, that their help is acknowledged, and that they do not carry adult responsibilities such as their parent's treatment or safety (section 7).

Should my child see a psychologist? Not as a matter of principle. Many children do well with adults who explain things to them and stand by them. A psychologist is useful if signs last several weeks, if the child has been through a crisis that left its mark or if they are carrying too much. A family programme, where one exists, can also help a child who is doing well, since its very aim is to prevent difficulties.

ill parentmental illnesschildadolescenttalking about the illnessyoung carerparentificationhospital admissionresiliencepreventionFamily Talkfamily

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