How to Be a Life-Saving Parent to a Child Struggling With a Mental Illness
Based on the real-life experiences of a mother and her young adult daughter.
When a child has a mental illness, the person who suffers the most, after the sufferer herself, is usually her parents.
Parents resonate with their children’s pains in ways that non-parents cannot understand, and as such, they are in a crucial position to help their child suffering from mental illness.
Friends can help support people with mental illness, and so can therapists and other community members, but parents may be one of the most important factors in the equation (especially if the sufferer is young and/or still living at home).
Of course, parents who want to rush in and make everything better immediately soon find that the nature of mental illness makes it impossible to do that.
Still, there are many important things* a parent can do to help save their children’s lives from mental illness.
Things that my mother did for me.
My Life-Saving Mother
When I sank into the quicksand of a severe, debilitating anxiety disorder, many people close to me blamed and attacked me — including myself.
