ABSTRACT
Children often rely on their parents for their cognitive, emotional and psychological developmental processes. Having reared by a parent with schizophrenia exposes a child to a unique environment during their childhood developmental and formative years. To a certain extent, the child exposed to living with a schizophrenic parent can make him vulnerable to different behavioral, emotional and mental challenges that are risk factors in the development of personality and mental disorders. This paper will present the effects on children with a schizophrenic parent and to evaluate the extent of the challenges in their coping ability that may tend to result in disruptive and disturbing behaviors during their childhood years that tend to influence their personality development and how to help these children cope to overcome these risks.
Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder that is characterized by an altered thoughts, behavior and emotions. Schizophrenic individuals manifest a disrupted thought process, disability to hear and see with the inability to process the information coming from his environment (Tsuang, Faraone and Glatt, 2011). This mental disorder is crippling to those affected by it and it becomes a lifetime disability and may involve a periodic hospitalization, and to a certain extent, may require the affected individual to be confined in a mental institution. This mental disability affects the individual’s ability to socially interact and may disrupt his or her social and family relationship. According to Mowbray, Bybee, Oyserman, Macfarlane and Bowersox (2006), children who are raised from a schizophrenic parent are considered to be at risk of developing behavioral and psychiatric problems. The child’s environment and his family play a crucial role on the personality development of the child. In the presence of a mental health problem such as schizophrenia that is suffered by the parent, the risk for a child to develop affective, behavioral and mental health problems is higher as compared to those who are raised from a parent without any mental and behavioral problems. Among the focus of studies among children who were raised by a parent with schizophrenia includes the risk of developing depression and manic depressive illness. Academic research and literatures point out the evidence of this risk where 10 to 40 percent of those whose relatives have mental health problems also develop such disorders (Cross, Silverman and Dougherty, 1987). Moreover, children of schizophrenics develop depression during their childhood. The other common behavioral and mental illnesses that may arise from children with schizophrenic parents are attention deficit disorder, separation anxiety disorder, personality disturbances and conduct disorders. It appears that parental illness has some influence in the development of these kinds of personality and behavioral disorders which have significant impact on the child’s cognitive and emotional development during their infancy and early childhood years. Schizophrenic parents in particular experience hallucinations, thought disturbances and delusions and it is considered to be a chronic mental problem. Children of schizophrenic parents are known to be 10 percent at risk to develop the mental illness as well when compared to the offsprings of non-schizophrenic parents. The behavioral, mental and emotional difficulties are stronger during the childhood years.
Research studies related the complication in pregnancy and giving birth of a schizhophrenic mother that may adversely affect the child to the socioeconomic status that often accompanies the mental disorder. As the child reaches his infancy and early childhood, the effects of having raised by a schizophrenic parent become apparent. They exhibit some mental difficulties and often scores lower than other children in terms of the linguistic, cognitive and psychomotor functions. There is also an apparent deficiencies seen in the child’s adaptive behavior and his emotional attachment. Researchers also point out that the risk is further magnified with the socioeconomic standing of the family. The effects of being raised from a parent with schizophrenia do not usually impact the child’s developmental behavior during the pre-school and pre-elementary years but its impact is significant as the child reaches the middle childhood where the child’s social and academic difficulties begin to emerge. They are often rated by their peers and teachers as less competent in academic performance and tend to show a disruptive, impulsive and aggressive behaviors. Academically, children from a schizophrenic parent are likely to show poor intellectual capacity, low grades and poor scholastic motivation. Generally, it is common for the child to manifest emotional instability and attention dysfunction. As the child is exposed to an environment where the parent manifests the characteristic schizophrenic behavior, the manifest of these symptoms indicates that the child of a schizophrenic parent is vulnerable to develop the same mental illness.
Children tend to rely on their parents to learn the appropriate behavioral response during their developmental years. Brown and Parker (2000) point out that they need some validation from their caretakers to be seen as who they are and need emotional and social response to develop an effective social interaction with others. Children often rely on their parent’s facial expression for approval and encouragement. A schizophrenic parent lacks the proper facial expression to communicate to the world around them and children tends to appreciate their parents as the mirror of their self. As a result, the child of a schizophrenic parent lack the proper guidance to learn and develop the proper social behavior and interaction with others and somehow adapt to their schizophrenic parent’s personality. Children from a parent with schizophrenia also lacks the emotional development that they need in order to develop a stronger and stable personality that is most appropriate for social interaction and adjusting to the world around them. Inviduals with schizophrenia are more withdrawn from their environment and this has a chilling effect to children who are expecting to receive affection, social response and appropriate guidance from their parents in terms of their emotional, behavioral and intellectual foundation. The lack of responsiveness and support from their immediate caretakers has a negative effect on the child. Consequently, the child develops insecurity, lack of emotional response, indifference, and depression over time. This withdrawal behavior that is seen in these children is actually caused by the fact that they grow up knowing their parent is not “there” for them. At a certain point, schizophrenic individuals may become more withdrawn from their environment but they may also at times manifest an aggressive behavior. Not knowing their normal range of behavior, schizophrenics are usually out of control and tends to overreact. With this kind of behavioral overscaling, children often find themselves as one to be blamed for their parent’s behavior and for their action resulting to the manifestations of their parent’s overreaction. Children often associate their parent’s behavior as hostile and aggressive and they often blamed themselves for this. Because of the transition of the parent’s behavior from being withdrawn and emotionally unattached to one of aggressiveness and hostility, the child becomes confused and often find the difficulties of coping with the situation. As the child spends more time with a schizophrenic parent, they tend to become confused between the reality of their own world and the reality ascribed from that of a schizophrenic world. The child’s interaction with a person with schizophrenia tends to alter the normal perception of the child about his world. Their exposure to the delusional behavior of a schizophrenic parent tends to bring the child outside of his “norm” which increases the risk of the child developing the same delusion and behavioral patterns as their schizophrenic parent.
Young children are most vulnerable from the difficulties in coping of living with a family member with a mental illness. Schizophrenia is a chronic mental illness that the child will be exposed to throughout their developmental years. The extreme behavioral manifestations of the parent with schizophrenia can influence the child’s coping mechanisms that might lead to the feeling of insecurity, vulnerability and inappropriate emotional, behavioral and mental development during their childhood years. According to Wepman and Heine (2009), the family interaction during the formative years of the child becomes the integral foundation of the child’s personality development. The child’s behavioral adaptiveness to their parent’s hallucination and delusional personality can rub off on them, thus putting them at risk of developing similar distorted perception of their environment as well. While children of schizophrenic parents are genetically susceptible of developing similar mental health problem, the risk of developing schizophrenia is higher owing to the environmental factors such as the child’s exposure to the delusional world of schizophrenia. The child’s adaptive behavior becomes quite distorted as their frequent interaction with their schizophrenic parent can alter their own social, emotional and behavioral normal development.
Because of the strong environmental influence to a child of having raised from a schizophrenic parent, the child needs to be exposed to a positive environment that can help buffer their genetically and environmental predisposition of developing similar characteristics of a schizophrenic. A high risk child should be exposed to an environment that can positively reinforce the normal and appropriate behavioral, emotional and psychological development process throughout their childhood and formative years (Watt, 1984). Early intervention can also help a child cope with the stress of living with a parent having a schizophrenia. Family counseling is often necessary to help the normal parent learn how to help the child cope with the other parent’s mental disorder. Genetically at risk children to schizophrenia should be observed in their behavior and to obtain help immediately when the first symptom of schizophrenic behavior begins to become apparent. Together with environmentally exposed children to schizophrenia, they should receive positive reinforcement in learning the proper social and behavioral interaction with their peers and from their teachers in schools. Child counseling can also help the child to cope with the difficulties and complications of living with a schizophrenic parent. Educating the child about the mental illness of their parent will also help the child to independently learn how to cope appropriately to their parent’s mental condition and abnormal behavior. Children with a schizophrenic parent are often exposed to a unique challenge especially during their formative years as compared to children raised by a non-schizophrenic parent. Educating them through counseling will enable them to become more competent in managing the frightening moments of seeing their schizophrenic parent transition from one psychotic episode to another. This will reduce the risks of a child to develop emotional, behavioral and psychological difficulties as they grow up.
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