Parenting Ain’t Easy
By: Sue Mcwilliams
Tags: Parenting Teenagers, Helping Others, Mental Health

Parenting Ain’t Easy

Parenting is not an easy job. There is no road map, no play book, no instruction manual and it also lasts for a really long time. As a parent whose adolescent that has a mental health disorder, and 1 in 5 will suffer from a mental health disorder, it is an even harder job.

I wish I an answer that would make the job of parenting an adolescent who is suffering and who may be a living nightmare easier but I don’t. What I can say is that in the midst of all of this you may experience physical, emotional and spiritual distress which is compassion fatigue. I speak from knowing, from the personal experience and from the research on compassion fatigue.

Compassion fatigue is a combination of burnout and secondary traumatic stress. The cost of caring for someone you love whose ups and downs may include self harm, violent outburst, depression, and anxiety. A adolescent who is incapable of going to school, maybe using drugs and alcohol, and having encounters with the police. All while you try to maintain a household, go to work and have a life.

I had no idea that I had compassion fatigue until I was at a lecture on the subject for those caring for a parent or spouse with dementia. As the lecturer talked about the strain of caring causing physical symptoms such as GI upset and ulcers, insomnia, high blood pressure, being irritable and anxious, hopeless, feeling isolated and alone I felt like they were talking about me. Yet, I didn’t have a parent or a spouse with dementia but I did have an adolescent who has been struggling with a mental health disorder since age eleven. No one ever talked about this phenomenon.

So it became my doctoral project, compassion fatigue and the family caregiver of an adolescent with a mental health disorder. I found that professional caregiver and recently family caregivers caring for someone with dementia or a terminal illness could have compassion fatigue. So what about caregivers of an adolescent or young adult with a mental health disorder? There are a lot of similarities yet no one was talking about it. I asked a couple of the therapist at the program my child had attended during high school if they had heard about compassion fatigue and they hadn’t. They never really thought about the impact, they did say that they talked about parents being stressed, maybe PTSD and always mentioned to parents that they should take care. I explained what it was and that I thought it was what I was experiencing.

It was at this point that I knew that this would be my doctoral project. I spent the past year learning all I could on the subject and what to do about it. Over the summer I implemented a new program at the residential treatment program my daughter attended. The project included educating the staff, creating interventions and a screening tool for families. I am currently in the evaluation stage and will publish my findings in the spring.

While it may be a long journey there are things that can help build resilience for parents. If you want to know more about this and what the interventions are please feel free to contact me at Suzanne.McWilliams@nau.edu