Skip to main content

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1427432
This article is part of the Research Topic Parents with Mental and/or Substance Use Disorders and their Children, Volume III View all 30 articles

Exploring past research to move forward: a scoping review of aims, outcomes, and recommendations in parental mental illness qualitative research

Provisionally accepted
Geneviève Piché Geneviève Piché 1,2*Gavin Davidson Gavin Davidson 3Addy Dunkley-Smith Addy Dunkley-Smith 4Anne Grant Anne Grant 3Scott Yates Scott Yates 5Darryl Maybery Darryl Maybery 6
  • 1 University of Quebec in Outaouais, Gatineau, Canada
  • 2 Centre de Recherche Universitaire pour les Jeunes et les Familles, Québec, Canada
  • 3 Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
  • 4 School of Rural Health, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
  • 5 De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom
  • 6 Department of Rural Health, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    As parental mental illness is a global public health concern, rigorous qualitative research is central to understanding families' experiences, needs and outcomes to inform optimal service provision in adult mental health and children's social services.Methods. The current review identified, appraised and synthesized international qualitative research exploring Families and Parent Mental Illness (FaPMI) research to determine the focus, findings and outcomes and to summarize the recommendations made about the direction of future research. Findings are classified according to outcomes for children, parents, and families.Results. While some children experienced positive outcomes from a parent's illness, most faced impacts on their social-emotional wellbeing, school performance, increased caregiving responsibilities, strained parent relationships, and lack of understanding about parental mental illness. Some family members endured abuse and struggled to adapt to an ill parent's unpredictable needs, with reluctance to discuss the situation. Parents found parenting challenging yet viewed having children as a protective factor. Future research should gather diverse perspectives, explore within-family factors and social environments, develop and test interventions, and address methodological issues like sampling.Discussion. This review highlights the centrality of qualitative data in comprehensively understanding and evaluating outcomes of parental mental illness on families and provides clear recommendations regarding future research.

    Keywords: parent, Child, Family, mental illness, outcomes, qualitative research, Scoping review

    Received: 03 May 2024; Accepted: 20 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Piché, Davidson, Dunkley-Smith, Grant, Yates and Maybery. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Geneviève Piché, University of Quebec in Outaouais, Gatineau, Canada

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.