Telling children about mental illness

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EmilyCatholic

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How do you think a 10 year old boy should be told his mother has a mental illness?

I have depression and my son will soon be re-united with me after 6 months in foster care.

When he was taken in August, he already knew I had depression and we always had a very close, honest, trusting, open wonderful relationship. He’s a fantastic child. He’s always been a very happy boy and thinks I’m a princess!
Before they return him to me, they want to have a “talk” with him about mental illness. It’s gonna be a clinical model thing. I have always explained things to my son from a Catholic point of view. I am allowed to be there when they give him the “talk”. (I see him twice a week supervised).
I’d like him to have a Catholic perspective on all education, so…what do you think I can contribute to this “talk” to help my son see mental illness from the Christian perspective, if there is one?! I really want my son to have spiritual knowledge as well as medical knowledge.

Any thoughts?!

Thank you!!
 
If he already knows you have depression, I think that explaining to him that this is not his fault might be included in “the talk.” Are there any others that you have been diagnosed with? Also, you might want to avoid any really big promises. Like, “I’ll never get that depressed again.” It may well be that your depression is under control, but there is always the possibilty for a “relapse.” Find a group for the two of you (probably seperate) so that you will receive proper support during this time. You both need to know that you aren’t alone in this. If your son is in a group of his peers who have parents with similar diagnosis, he would most probably find help. I know that with my daughter, she had to go live with my parents when she was 9. She later told me that she found this hard at first because she was the only kid she knew who didn’t live with at least one parent. But once she got to high school, she met others who were in similar situations. So, he needs to reassured in this, if possible. And know that God is with you throughout this time of trial.
 
Christy_Beth said:
If he already knows you have depression, I think that explaining to him that this is not his fault might be included in “the talk.” Are there any others that you have been diagnosed with? Also, you might want to avoid any really big promises. Like, “I’ll never get that depressed again.” It may well be that your depression is under control, but there is always the possibilty for a “relapse.” Find a group for the two of you (probably seperate) so that you will receive proper support during this time. You both need to know that you aren’t alone in this. If your son is in a group of his peers who have parents with similar diagnosis, he would most probably find help. I know that with my daughter, she had to go live with my parents when she was 9. She later told me that she found this hard at first because she was the only kid she knew who didn’t live with at least one parent. But once she got to high school, she met others who were in similar situations. So, he needs to reassured in this, if possible. And know that God is with you throughout this time of trial.
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Thank you so much, this is wonderful advice!
 
Professionals who deal with these situations will amaze you, I promise. I have watched people conduct sessions like you will have several times and I am always amazed at how well the children handle the situation. It is entirely possible that one of the people you will meet with will be Catholic and able to help you introduce the role your faith plays in your life and recovery. Bring your concerns regarding this to the person in charge of the meeting and ask their advice. God bless you.
 
mountee said:
Professionals who deal with these situations will amaze you, I promise. I have watched people conduct sessions like you will have several times and I am always amazed at how well the children handle the situation. It is entirely possible that one of the people you will meet with will be Catholic and able to help you introduce the role your faith plays in your life and recovery. Bring your concerns regarding this to the person in charge of the meeting and ask their advice. God bless you.
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Thank you so much 🙂
 
You sound a very sensible person, with lots of love to give…you’re on the right track, so take heart.

This very beautiful encyclical *Spe Salvi *by Pope Benedict XVI is all about Christian “hope” and I highly recommend it - especially to those who suffer & are trying to reconcile this with their Faith.

God bless, will be keeping you in my heart & prayers:
http://ericsammons.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Pope-Benedict-XVI.jpg
"… The term “eternal life” is intended to give a name to this known “unknown”. Inevitably it is an inadequate term that creates confusion. “Eternal”, in fact, suggests to us the idea of something interminable, and this frightens us; “life” makes us think of the life that we know and love and do not want to lose, even though very often it brings more toil than satisfaction, so that while on the one hand we desire it, on the other hand we do not want it.

To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt.

It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time—the before and after—no longer exists. We can only attempt to grasp the idea that such a moment is life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy.

This is how Jesus expresses it in Saint John’s Gospel:* “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” *(16:22). We must think along these lines if we want to understand the object of Christian hope, to understand what it is that our faith, our being with Christ, leads us to expect9]."

"Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to* suffer with* man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus’s Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering* with* us; hence* con-solatio* is present in all suffering, the consolation of God’s compassionate love—and so the star of hope rises.”
vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html
 
Don’t make it a big deal, say to him you love him and mommy is not feeling well but God is taking care of you. He shouldn’t feel that he has to take care of you, he needs to be a boy.

I pray for you!
 
I’m not enough of an expert in mental illness to say much.

But I think you address this like any other illness that effects the body --like asthma or diabetes. In your case your illness may result in you doing things (or not doing things) and saying things (or failing to say things) that are outside of “normal”.

The spiritual aspect of this is that God loves you and God loves your son. But just like people with missing limbs or hear transplants, or blindness or any other problems, there will be some limits to what you can do sometimes. And there may be side effects from any medications you take. But he’s your son and you want to do what’s best for him and help him be the man God wants him to be.

You probably need to warn him about any symptoms of your illness that you yourself might not recognize (if that is likely to happen.)

And you ask him to pray for you as you will pray for him. Don’t set up God by promising your son you are cured. But you can both pray that you can live with this illness.
 
I think that the best thing to do is to look at mental illness like other illnesses. The only “Christian perspective” that I can think of that would be added is the dignity of all people, regardless of their condition or disability, and the understanding of why there is suffering in the world. These are not things I would spring on him in the first conversation, but over time your child might find himself wondering the question that so many people wonder - “why do bad things happen to good people” (in his form, it will be - “why does mental illness have to happen to me?”). This is something that instruction in the faith will help - learning about original sin, and the effects of sin on the world. In this world where life is so often not respected, your child will need to learn that all life is precious, including the lives of people who are suffering. He may be challenged on that personally, if there is teasing or embarrassment about mental illness that he experiences. He might have to realize that you deserve that dignity. Or he might have to realize that HE deserves that dignity and love - if perhaps your mental illness has kept you from being able to teach him about his own worth and about how loveable he is.

But as I said, I don’t think those are things to bring up in that first conversation, but rather to work on providing him with a background of understanding these things, as well as showing him God’s love as best you can. Really, I would think that the most Christian way to look at mental illness is through the medical model, and I would be content to have him hear a very scientific explanation of depression.

Prayers for you and your son,
TKC
 
ThyKingdomCome said:
I think that the best thing to do is to look at mental illness like other illnesses. The only “Christian perspective” that I can think of that would be added is the dignity of all people, regardless of their condition or disability, and the understanding of why there is suffering in the world. These are not things I would spring on him in the first conversation, but over time your child might find himself wondering the question that so many people wonder - “why do bad things happen to good people” (in his form, it will be - “why does mental illness have to happen to me?”). This is something that instruction in the faith will help - learning about original sin, and the effects of sin on the world. In this world where life is so often not respected, your child will need to learn that all life is precious, including the lives of people who are suffering. He may be challenged on that personally, if there is teasing or embarrassment about mental illness that he experiences. He might have to realize that you deserve that dignity. Or he might have to realize that HE deserves that dignity and love - if perhaps your mental illness has kept you from being able to teach him about his own worth and about how loveable he is.

But as I said, I don’t think those are things to bring up in that first conversation, but rather to work on providing him with a background of understanding these things, as well as showing him God’s love as best you can. Really, I would think that the most Christian way to look at mental illness is through the medical model, and I would be content to have him hear a very scientific explanation of depression.

Prayers for you and your son,
TKC
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👍
 
ThyKingdomCome said:
I think that the best thing to do is to look at mental illness like other illnesses. The only “Christian perspective” that I can think of that would be added is the dignity of all people, regardless of their condition or disability, and the understanding of why there is suffering in the world. These are not things I would spring on him in the first conversation, but over time your child might find himself wondering the question that so many people wonder - “why do bad things happen to good people” (in his form, it will be - “why does mental illness have to happen to me?”). This is something that instruction in the faith will help - learning about original sin, and the effects of sin on the world. In this world where life is so often not respected, your child will need to learn that all life is precious, including the lives of people who are suffering. He may be challenged on that personally, if there is teasing or embarrassment about mental illness that he experiences.
TKC
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I agree to a point, but this mother is dealing with a lot more than just explaining “her” problems to her son. He has just spent the last 6 months in foster care with limited visitation with his mother and probably no visits to any of his friends or other family members. He is going to have plenty of issues of his own to deal with - the primary one the issue of abandonment. At age 10 he’s not going to be all that concerned about mom’s special needs, he has a whole spectrum of his own. Without knowing the reason why he was removed from the home I will go out on a limb and say it probably wasn’t anything he did as a 10 year old. There is going to be some serious anger issues or guilt issues for the child.
 
SamH said:
There is going to be some serious anger issues or guilt issues for the child.
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I won’t disagree with you.

But I am not sure what you are suggesting this means for the mother. That she asks for forgiveness? That she tells him it’s not his fault? That she arranges for counseling? That she prepares for negative behaviors from him for the next while?
 
SMHW said:
I won’t disagree with you.

But I am not sure what you are suggesting this means for the mother. That she asks for forgiveness? That she tells him it’s not his fault? That she arranges for counseling? That she prepares for negative behaviors from him for the next while?
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This means all those things. It also means not burdening the child with additional anxieties. In other words it probably isn’t the best time to tell the child that you are ill.
 
SamH said:
This means all those things. It also means not burdening the child with additional anxieties. In other words it probably isn’t the best time to tell the child that you are ill.
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By that reasoning a child whose parent spent several months in a coma in a hospital shouldn’t be told that the parent was ill/injured even if the problem is something that could re-occur.
 
SamH said:
I agree to a point, but this mother is dealing with a lot more than just explaining “her” problems to her son. He has just spent the last 6 months in foster care with limited visitation with his mother and probably no visits to any of his friends or other family members. He is going to have plenty of issues of his own to deal with - the primary one the issue of abandonment. At age 10 he’s not going to be all that concerned about mom’s special needs, he has a whole spectrum of his own. Without knowing the reason why he was removed from the home I will go out on a limb and say it probably wasn’t anything he did as a 10 year old. There is going to be some serious anger issues or guilt issues for the child.
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I don’t disagree with you, but I was answering the question “what should I tell him about mental illness from a Christian perspective.” There is a much more expansive question of “how do I help this child deal with the difficulties related to having a mom with mental illness, being in foster care, and returning home.” But she didn’t ask that, and I wanted to give her a focused answer, because I think that the question she did ask was still an important question. I do hope that those other very important issues are also being addressed.
 
SMHW said:
By that reasoning a child whose parent spent several months in a coma in a hospital shouldn’t be told that the parent was ill/injured even if the problem is something that could re-occur.
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If that’s case he should probably stay in foster care.
 
SamH said:
If that’s case he should probably stay in foster care.
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We’re not this woman’s social workers or psychiatrist. We shouldn’t even attempt to make pronouncements about whether the child should or shouldn’t be returning home, since we don’t know any details about the situation.

In my experience, 10 years old is old enough to perceive what’s going on – kids of that age frequently understand that something is wrong even if they’ve never been told what’s going on. So this boy might know quite a bit about his mother’s illness even if no one has sat down and talked to him about it.

The professionals involved in this case have determined that it is best for this child if he is told about his mother’s illness. When the OP posted 3 weeks ago, she indicated that “they” (I assume she means the professionals) had already decided to have this discussion with her son – and therefore she was asking advice. I imagine, since the OP was 3 weeks ago, that the discussion has probably already occurred…
 
AnastasiaRomano said:
We’re not this woman’s social workers or psychiatrist. We shouldn’t even attempt to make pronouncements about whether the child should or shouldn’t be returning home, since we don’t know any details about the situation.
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From that point of view no one here knows enough about her situation to offer any advice - including what you wrote in the next two paragraphs of your post.

Besides, the section you quoted was in response the question posed by SMHW, not the OP.
 
I can’t give you advice from a Christian perspective, but I do have some insight that might be helpful anyway.

At ten he is old enough to be told the basics in a matter of fact way. In middle school he is going to be taught about mental health issues in his health class, and you don’t want someone else to teach your son about your illness, especially when it has impacted him so severely. Be matter of fact, compare it to a physical illness, and let him know that you are being treated and that if for some reason that should cease to be enough there are plenty of other treatment options out there and that you will be ok.

Yes, you might relapse. That’s pretty common with mental illnesses. If he asks let him know that you can’t make any promises about the future but that you will do your very best to stay well and to work with your doctors. But the truth is that none of us know how well we will be tomorrow, physically or mentally. And you need to work out a plan if you do relapse. Find someone stable that he trusts so that he never has to go back to foster care if you get ill again.

Above all, do not make your illness sound evil, or like you did something wrong or have something to be ashamed of. There is a very strong genetic link when it comes to depression, and if you stigmatize it in your own home even though you’ve gone through it your son will be far less likely to seek treatment and care if and when he ever needs it. He needs to know that no matter what he can always get help.
 
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