Mentally ill mothers of young children. Analysis of in-patient chart reviews.
When a mother is hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, nurses are presented with an opportunity to assess parenting disorders and identify early parent-child disturbances. The purpose of this article is to discuss the parenting issues recorded in 21 charts of hospitalized, mentally ill mothers who had a child less than 6 years old. Based on this chart review, three themes related to parenting young children emerged: (1) how psychiatric symptoms affected the mother's ability to parent her children; (2) the difficulty the mother had finding the energy to care for her children; and (3) the mother's need to be with her children in spite of her difficulty caring for them. None of the charts contained assessments of the quality of the mother-child relationship or the mother's ability to resume her maternal role following discharge. The implications of these findings for nursing practice, education and research are discussed.
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D000328:Adult; D002668:Child Rearing; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000451:nursing*; D009034:Mother-Child Relations