Family Life in Relation to Major Mental Illness

Treatment of individuals with mental health illnesses or disorders may be effective and successful when stable and supportive relationships, communication, and emotional support from the family members are involved. Although financial support can also often have a positive effect on people with mental health problems. But some people with major mental health illnesses may need intense family support, while others may need little help for treatment or some may need only daily companionship to recover from their mental health disorders  (Baumeister & Bushman, 2020).

A study conducted by Alegría et al. (2018) showed that negative family relationships can lead to stress which may affect mental health and even lead to different physical and psychological symptoms. Moreover, Adler, Glymour, and Fielding (2016) claimed that unsupportive families can harm the mental health of individuals or make a mental illness worse. Most mental health patients rely on support comes from family members and if a family member refuses to support the recovery process can be negatively affected.

Psychiatric patients tend to exacerbate when there is a strong emotional expression in their surroundings. The impact of family members’ words, behaviour, and attitudes is high because they feel that they are emotionally connected to them (Brown & Harris, 2012). For instance, a substance abuse patient can relapse to substance abuse when he/she feels a lack of support, emotional detachment, and stigma from the family members, which may trigger a cycle of relapse and recovery. The only way out of this maelstrom for the whole family is joint therapy to prevent flare-ups and relapses (Amaresha & Venkatasubramanian, 2012). In this way, everyone together restores and improves each other’s health with less stress and relapses. Families learn to accept that family members are sick and need help to recover. Czyz, Liu, and King (2012) highlighted that educating family members about mental illness is a way of expressing emotions that can be less meaningful. Besides this, knowing the anomalies will help them understand and recognize certain behaviours. Families will become more aware of the needs and requirements of the disease while family conflicts are significantly reduced and relationships between loved ones are improved.

References:

(1) Adler, N. E., Glymour, M. M., & Fielding, J. (2016). Addressing social determinants of health and health inequalities. Jama, 316(16), 1641-1642.

(2) Alegría, M., NeMoyer, A., Falgàs Bagué, I., Wang, Y., & Alvarez, K. (2018). Social determinants of mental health: where we are and where we need to go. Current psychiatry reports, 20(11), 1-13.

(3) Amaresha, A. C., & Venkatasubramanian, G. (2012). Expressed emotion in schizophrenia: an overview. Indian journal of psychological medicine, 34(1), 12-20.

(4) Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2020). Social psychology and human nature. Cengage Learning.

(5) Brown, G. W., & Harris, T. (2012). Social origins of depression: A study of psychiatric disorder in women. Routledge.

(6) Czyz, E. K., Liu, Z., & King, C. A. (2012). Social connectedness and one-year trajectories among suicidal adolescents following psychiatric hospitalization. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 41(2), 214-226.