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Understanding Children and Young People’s Mental Health

Section 2: The impact of children and young people’s
mental health problems on others

This section will explore the following:

• The impact on others of living with a child or young person with mental
health concerns

• The range of services that may be required to support positive mental
health in children and young people

• How cultural beliefs and social attitudes can affect expectations of
diagnosis of mental health concerns.

The impact on others of living with a child or young person
with mental health concerns

Parents, guardians and families

If a child or young person is having problems, the parents can all too often blame
themselves with resulting feelings of guilt that they are in some way bad parents. This
in turn makes their relationship with the child and an already physically exhausting
task even more stressful and exhausting. Parents can begin to question their
competence and worth as parents and feel that they have failed.

Some children refuse to go to school for a range of reasons as one aspect of their
mental ill health, and parents may not feel they can tell the school what’s happening.
Many parents will feel that they might be judged as a bad parent and failing to tackle
the problems, or they may fear being prosecuted for not sending their child to school.

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