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Issues of care are issues of justice: reframing the experiences of family caregivers of children with mental illness
- Authors:
- SUITER Sarah VanHooser, HEFLINGER Craig Anne
- Journal article citation:
- Families in Society, 92(2), April 2011, pp.191-198.
- Publisher:
- The Alliance for Children and Families
Studying the role of caregiver strain and its effect on the children involved is important, but it is also important to examine the effects of caregiving on the caregivers themselves. This is particularly true for people who care for children who are experiencing mental illness, and even more so for caregivers living in rural areas who often have increased difficulties as a result of longer travel times, lack of specialty services, and fewer community resources. While there is ample evidence documenting caregiver burden, it continues to go largely unaddressed by mental health care systems and economic and legal structures that might be altered to better support primary caregivers. This article, through the use of vignettes, reports on the lived experiences of 42 rural primary caregivers for children with mental health issues and applies a justice framework to suggest possible alternatives for building mechanisms for caregiver support. The framework allows for an understanding of caregiving that takes the burdens of care work seriously; provides structural supports for caregivers; and connects mental health disciplines with feminist social frameworks to better identify some of the causes of caregiver stress.
How caregivers make meaning of child mental health problems: toward understanding caregiver strain and help seeking
- Authors:
- MAYBERRY Lindsay Satterwhite, HEFLINGER Craig Anne
- Journal article citation:
- Families in Society, 94(2), 2013, pp.105-113.
- Publisher:
- The Alliance for Children and Families
Family caregivers’ conceptualizations of their child’s emotional and behavioral problems (EBP) influence help seeking for the child and caregiver strain. Interviews with 21 caregivers were analysed to explore their conceptualizations about the cause of their child’s EBP, their experiences of strain, and their reported help seeking behaviors. Caregivers had divergent conceptualizations of their child’s EBP: 12 caregivers viewed the EBP as caused by a disorder and described the onset of symptoms as the central stressful event, whereas 9 caregivers described their child’s problems as a response to an earlier stressor (e.g., trauma, abuse, divorce). Different patterns of caregiver strain and help seeking were associated with caregiver conceptualization. All caregivers voiced a need for peer-to-peer support for caregivers and youth with EBP. (Edited publisher abstract)