Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session II

Psychosocial Outcomes for Adult Children of Mothers with Serious Mental Illness

Purpose: A substantial amount of research has confirmed psychological and behavioral problems in children of mothers with mental illness during infancy and the preschool years. This study examined adult children of mothers with serious mental illnesses and sought to describe a wide variety of outcomes and the extent to which they were predicted by mothers’ psychiatric history versus family context during childhood.

Methods: This study is a spin-off of a longitudinal, NIMH-funded study which enrolled 379 women from the public mental health system in an urban area. We selected a subsample of these women who were mothers of adult children and who had diagnoses of either depression or bipolar disorder. With permission of the mothers (n=61), we contacted and interviewed one of their adult children. The adult child participants ranged in age from 20 to 38 years (Mean = 24.1 years); 62% of the sample were male; 59% reported their race as African-American, 27% as Caucasian, and 14% as other race/ethnicities.

Findings: There was wide variability in the psychosocial outcomes of the adult children studied: -- 34% reported some college education, yet an equal number had not completed high school; -- 39% were engaged in full-time work, while 27% reported not currently working at all; -- 27% indicated they had had convictions for felonies (6 were in prison); -- but 79% of the sample scored below the AUDIT cut-off scores for problematic alcohol consumption (Mean = 4.7). -- The average Satisfaction with Life Scale score of 20.5 was lower than that reported for normative samples of the same age.

The adult children’s outcomes were not predicted by either diagnosis of mother’s illness or by onset of her mental illness in relation to birth of the child. Rather, measures of perceived responsiveness and acceptance by mother during childhood (reported retrospectively) were related to the well-being and outcomes of these adult children.

Implications: This study is unique in studying mothers with serious mental illnesses, diagnosed with bipolar disorder or major depression, and in tracking the outcomes of their offspring into adulthood. While much research has focused on the negative impact of mother’s mental illness on the future well-being of children, our study points to resilience in a large majority of individuals. Nevertheless, there appears to be about one-third with very problematic outcomes. Services to parents with serious mental illnesses need to attend to their parenting status and to the needs of their children.

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