An isolated involvement in mental health care – experiences of parents of young adults

Birgitta Andershed, Mats Ewertzon and Anita Johansson

Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2017, vol. 26, issue 7-8, 1053-1065

Abstract: Aims and objectives To explore parents’ involvement in the informal and professional care of their young adult child with mental illness. A further aim was to examine concepts in the caring theory of ‘Involvement in the light–Involvement in the dark’ in the context of mental health care. Background Mental illness has increased among young people in high‐income countries, and suicide is now the leading cause of death for this group. Because of their disease, these young people may have difficulty in carrying out daily, taken‐for‐granted, tasks. Consequently, they often become dependent on their parents, and their parents shoulder a considerable responsibility. Design A secondary descriptive design with a deductive content analysis was used. Methods Ten parents who have a son or daughter with long‐term mental illness (aged 18–25 years) were interviewed. The deductive analysis was based on the caring theory of ‘Involvement in the light–Involvement in the dark’. Results The results are described using the following concepts in the theory: ‘Knowing’, ‘Doing’, ‘Being’ and ‘Attitude of the health professionals’. The result are to a great extent consistent with the ‘Involvement in the dark’ metaphor, which describes an isolated involvement in which the parents were not informed, seen or acknowledged by the health professionals. Continuous support by professionals with a positive attitude was described as being of decisive importance for meaningful involvement. The theory's transferability is strengthened to the mental health care context. Conclusions Parents have a considerable need for knowledge that can enable them to choose how they should act (be) and what they should do, in order to help and support their child. Relevance to clinical practice Since the patient, the family members and the professionals are mutually dependent, it is important to make use of each other’s knowledge in a partnership to achieve a common caring strategy.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.13560

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:26:y:2017:i:7-8:p:1053-1065

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Clinical Nursing from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().