Understanding the Parenting Experience of A Child With Mental Illness and the Construct of Parent Recovery within the Social Service and Court Communities

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The Courts manage a child with mental illness as an invested yet impersonal steward of change or supervision. An invested parent is the true personal steward of that child's welfare. That stewardship can create trauma over time and therefore benefit from technical supports to sustain attention, hope, and vitality. This article is a perspective‐based article detailing the psychological experience of parenting the adolescent and young adult child with a mental illness and presents the current construct of ‘recovery’ as an evidence‐based method to enhance parent competency. Practitioner's Key Points: Persons working within the court systems that manage families raising a child with a mental illness need to understand each families’ basic resource needs. Properly training and supporting parents of a child with mental illness can lessen the burden of other court and social service resources in servicing these families. Understanding the construct of recovery in managing mental illness provides professionals working within the court systems with new tools to deliver better outcomes.