Summary: Parenting plays a profound role in shaping a child’s overall well-being, including their mental health. When a child faces the challenges of mental illness, it is vital for parents to provide the right support, understanding, and guidance to aid their recovery. 

Building a Strong Foundation of Understanding and Empathy

Understanding and empathy form the bedrock of proper parenting when a child is dealing with mental illness. It is crucial for parents to educate themselves about their child’s condition, its symptoms, and how it impacts their emotions and behavior. This knowledge allows parents to approach the child’s struggles with compassion and provide appropriate support.

Fostering Open Communication and Active listening

Encouraging open communication is essential to establishing a safe space for the child to express their feelings and concerns. Parents should actively listen without judgment, allowing the child to share their experiences and emotions. This two-way communication not only strengthens the parent-child bond but also enables early detection of potential challenges, ensuring timely intervention.

Providing Access to Professional Mental Health Care

Proper parenting involves seeking professional mental health care for the child. Collaborating with therapists, counselors, or psychiatrists creates an integrated support system for the child’s recovery. Regular therapy sessions can help the child develop coping mechanisms and address underlying issues contributing to their mental health struggles.

Creating a Nurturing and Stable Environment

A nurturing and stable home environment is vital for a child’s mental health recovery. Setting clear boundaries, maintaining consistent routines, and offering unconditional love create a sense of safety and security for the child. This stable foundation enables the child to focus on healing and growth.

Positive Reinforcement and Celebrating Progress

Recognizing and celebrating the child’s efforts and milestones, no matter how small, is essential for building their self-esteem and motivation. Positive reinforcement reinforces the idea that progress is valued, encouraging the child to continue their journey towards recovery with determination and confidence.

Educating Family and Community to Reduce stigma

Proper parenting extends beyond the confines of the home. Parents can play a pivotal role in reducing the stigma surrounding mental illness within the family and community. By educating others about the child’s condition and fostering understanding and acceptance, parents create an inclusive support network for the child.

Teaching Healthy Coping Strategies

Parents can actively teach their children healthy coping strategies to manage stress and emotions. Techniques such as mindfulness, deep breathing, and engaging in creative activities can empower the child to navigate challenges and cope with triggers effectively.

Promoting Physical Well-Being

Physical and mental health are intertwined, and proper parenting involves encouraging a balanced lifestyle. Parents should prioritize a nutritious diet, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep for their child. A healthy body contributes to a healthier mind, enhancing the child’s overall well-being.

Advocating for the Child’s Needs

Parents act as advocates for their children in various settings, such as schools or social circles. Ensuring the child receives appropriate accommodations and support in these environments fosters an environment conducive to recovery and growth.

Patience and Flexibility

Recovery from mental illness may be a gradual process, and parents must exercise patience and flexibility. Each child’s journey is unique, and parents should respect their pace, offering unwavering support through the ups and downs.

Conclusion

Proper parenting can be a powerful force in helping a child recover from mental illness. By providing understanding, empathy, and the right support, parents create a nurturing environment that facilitates healing and growth. Active listening, open communication, and access to professional care further strengthen the child’s chances of recovery. Together, with love, patience, and a commitment to reducing stigma, parents can empower their children to overcome mental health challenges and embrace a brighter, healthier future.

Generally, we are aware of what is going on around us but it is not that we are aware of everything that is happening. When we listen to a lecture in a class, in between our thought moves to some other things. This only shows that our consciousness moves away. The states of consciousness are subjective and very personal.

Though discussion of conscious experience occurs in every topic of psychology, defining it and explaining it has been difficult. Many people refer to consciousness as a person’s current awareness of external and internal stimuli. This is one aspect of consciousness. We are conscious not only when we monitor our environment but also when we try to control ourselves and our environment.

Hence consciousness involves:

• Monitoring ourselves and our environment so that perceptions, memories and thoughts are represented in awareness.
• Controlling ourselves and our environment so that we are able to initiate and terminate behavioral and cognitive activities.

Monitoring ourselves is one important aspect of it. Processing information from the environment is the main function of the body’s sensory system. It aids in becoming aware of what is happening in our surroundings as well as within us. But it focuses only on some stimuli and ignores others. This helps in dealing with information overload. Our attention is selective; events that are important for our survival are given top priority.

Another important function of it is controlling. It helps in planning, initiating and guiding our actions. Of course all our behaviors are not controlled by consciousness. In fact, many behaviors occur outside of it.

It refers to a person’s awareness of the sensations, thoughts and feelings being experienced at a given moment. An altered state of consciousness is a change from an ordinary pattern of mental functioning to a state that seems different to the person experiencing the change. Altered states of consciousness can vary from the distraction of a vivid daydream to the confusion and perceptual distortion caused by drug intoxication.

Preconscious memories: Though our awareness at any given moment is only limited, stimuli that are not our focus of attention can have some influence in our consciousness. For instance, when you are having lunch in a restaurant, ignoring the conversation of others when your name is mentioned by someone that catches your attention.

Many of our memories and thoughts which are not part of our consciousness can be brought into awareness. For instance, you may not be conscious of your friend’s marriage that took place last month. But the memories can be brought into your awareness if you wish. Memories that are accessible to consciousness are preconscious memories.

The unconscious: The earliest theory of consciousness is the psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud. He believed that a major portion of the mind was unconscious. It contains memories impulses and desires that are not accessible to consciousness. Freud believed that unpleasant memories and unfulfilled wishes are diverted to the unconscious. Though these are not accessible to consciousness, they exert a strong influence on one’s behavior. Many psychologists and researchers disagree that unconscious contains only unpleasant memories. Instead they state that there are memories and mental processes that are outside of consciousness. In other words, all agree that there exists and unconscious aspect.

Automaticity and Dissociation: while controlling is an important function of consciousness, some activities with frequent practice become automatic or habitual. For instance, when we learn to drive it requires our complete attention. Once we master the activity, we are able to drive at the same time carry on a casual conversation. The habituation of responses that initially required conscious attention is called automaticity. In such activities the control is there but it is dissociated from consciousness. Proposed by the French psychiatrist Pierre Janet, dissociation is a state that under certain conditions some thoughts and actions become split off, or dissociated from the rest of consciousness and function outside awareness.

Consciousness is a person’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings at a given moment. It monitors and controls our actions.

Work is one of the most basic of all human institutions. It not only has a survival value but also other equally important factors like philosophical, moral, religious, political and psychological functions.

If you ask your friend, why do you work?

He/she will say “for the salary”. If that is the reason why does a homemaker works for 8 to 10 hours a day for which he or she is not paid? Why does a rich person work in a voluntary organization? Why does a person resign a job and takes up another job with less pay? So the term work may be defined as “an activity that produces something of value for other people.”

In the modern society, work is an activity that takes a major portion of the time of most adults. Though the type of work and hours per week may change, most people can anticipate spending about 30 to 40 years working. So this is one of the major means of life which calls proper adjustment for a healthy and happy living.

Changing attitude towards work.
Each individual wants to work. But the views of work differ from one person to another, from one society to another, one generation to another etc. The views toward work may change over time in the same person also.

There are certain wrong notion about work. For some, it gives an image of toil, effort, energy sapping activities that one must do. For some others, it is something few people do willingly that everyone would prefer other activities if it weren’t for financial necessity. Of late, our views, of work has changed considerably. People do realize that they can enjoy the work.

When you talk to a person who is retired he/she will say that the work atmosphere has deteriorated, the youngsters do not work, they are lazy etc. If you ask younger person who is working, he/she would disagree with this view. Instead their argument would be that I have spent more time and money to acquire the knowledge and skill and I need a proper return for it. There is some logic in both arguments.

No individual says that he or she does not want to work. It only reveals that the attitude toward work is changing. The older person is more concerned with doing a service to the society when the younger one is more concerned with the personal development.

We have to note one significant change in the attitude toward work. There is a widespread attitude among the youngsters that hard work does not always pay off. This probably may be due to the wide gap between the jobs available and the number of aspirants. Another significant change is that people nowadays seek psychological satisfaction in their work.

What do people look for in job?
A simple answer for this might be that it depends on the person. Though this may be true, majority of people seem to converge on some factors. A study by Daniel Yankelovich (1976) showed that about 70% of people prefer a work that is ‘interesting’ and one with friendly helpful coworkers. ‘Close to this come’ opportunity to use your mind and ‘work results you can see’, Good pay gets only a 5th rank. Blue collar workers place greater emphasis on money while professionals put less emphasis, white collar workers fall in between these two.

Another study with college freshmen gives the following five as top criteria for job satisfaction interesting to do, uses skills and abilities, good chances for advancement secure future and tangible results. From this we understand that money is not the only criterion of work. of course, it is one of the major determinants.

Some psychological functions must be discussed

• Sense of personal fulfillment. In any walk of life, people have a drive to grow and learn new skills and accomplish something worthwhile. People seek such opportunities in their work too. If a job does not provide opportunity for such a need, the person may not be happy with the job.
• Personal identity. Imagine a situation in which someone ask you ‘who are you’ and you respond that ‘I am an executive’ in a company. This is not surprising because a person spends vast amount of time and energy for his/her job. So work is one of the more salient means of identifying one’s self in the complex changing and fragmented society
• Self-esteem. A related aspects of personal identity is self-esteem. The work helps in self-evaluation. work provides opportunities for mastering self and the environment. The person gets a continual feedback regarding one’s ambition to perform well. Work also can provide a sense that one is valued by society that one is doing something which needs to be done which is valued by others. If one takes pride in the quality and significance of one’s work, self-esteem is enhanced.
• Prevention of boredom. A person on the day of retirement feels sad why? One reason could be that he or she has lived a long life with the job. Another important reason is the question “How to spend the time from tomorrow?” He or she is worried that it would be boring without a job though many of us may not admit if we work partly to avoid being bored.
• Status and approval. Sociologists seem to believe that one of the major determinants of status in our society is occupation. The whole family takes pride in the occupation of the head of the family. It is the work that to a large extent regulate our time, interpersonal contact and life experiences.

It should also be noted that unemployment and forced retirement at an arbitrary age can have an impact on one’s identity and work, ultimately affecting one’s mental health.