The Role Of Parental Depression In a Family

Kids

oi-Staff

By Staff

Friday, May 15, 2009, 16:40

In today's stressful lifestyle, it is not difficult to find people who are stressed. However it has been found that children of depressed parents have a worst effect in their lives than their peers. It seems parental depression has an adverse impact on children.

When the parents are depressed, children take on an enormous amount of responsibility for the ill parent and for other family members. They take responsibility for the depressed parent, siblings and themselves, when they notice that the parent cannot cope. The toughest burden of responsibility that children take on is ensuring that the depressed parent doesn't commit suicide.

As the depressed parent withdraws from the family, children feel they have been left to themselves. This reduces the family interplay and reciprocity. Depression changes the relationship between a parent and his/her children, since they no longer communicate with each other as they used to.

Children take on an extremely heavy responsibility by monitoring and keeping an eye on the depressed parent. The parent's depression means both a sense of responsibility and a feeling of loneliness. The feelings of responsibility and loneliness include a striving and yearning for reciprocity with the parent, and for things to return to a state of normality.

Even when the depression goes away for a time, the family is never entirely free from anxiety over it coming back. This means that there is a prolonged period of suffering associated with depression.

Involving the entire family when a parent becomes ill is important, both for the children and the parents. It is essential to have a well-defined level of guaranteed care on how, when and from whom the families will get support.