Families experience stress from mental illnesses in different ways so below is a link for ways to cope with the stress that comes with COVID-19 and some resources that can be helpful for some people who are struggling.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html
Below is attached an article on the impact that COVID-19 have on people with severe mental illnesses.
Some in family coping mechanisms can be maintaining clear boundaries, communicating effectively, being flexible with rules, roles, and expectation, being committed to the family, maintaining a healthy marriage relationship, and maintaining family rituals and routines. These coping mechanisms are from Families & Change: Coping with Stressful Events and Transitions by Christine A. Price, Kevin R. Bush, and Sharon J. Price and they also talk about external resources. Some are integration in a social system and having social support from family friends, religious groups, the workplace, and community agents. Another resources could be the family as a while getting treatment.
Something some may find a little close to home is that COVID-19 can lead to people having mental health problems. With COVID-19 comes a lot of stress from different sources of COVID from being worried about catching it to the increase amount of cases and how people were effected by it.
When it comes to a family with a child that has a mental illness it is important for families to not just focus on the child with mental illness so parents need to find a balance. From the book Families & Change: Coping with Stressful Events and Transitions by Christine A. Price, Kevin R. Bush, and Sharon J. Price, they talk about a healthy families adaptive process. They say the process includes “(a) reorganizing and accessing resources as a family, (b) engaging in active coping (efforts to change the source of stress) and accommodating coping (efforts to adapt including reappraisal and positive thinking), (c) collaborating with medical professionals, (d) maintaining a positive outlook on life and hope for the future, and (e) providing emotional protection to the ill child.”
According to KFF Tracking Polling their has been an increase in how people feel that COVID negatively affected their mental health. It went from 32% in March to 53% in mid-July. “Many adults are also reporting specific negative impacts on their mental health and wellbeing, such as difficulty sleeping (36%) or eating (32%), increases in alcohol consumption or substance use (12%), and worsening chronic conditions (12%), due to worry and stress over the coronavirus.”
“Mental illnesses are common in the United States. Nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (51.5 million in 2019).”
There are many different causes to the different types of mental illness. According to an article by Bruce Link, Jo Phelan, Michaeline Bresnahan, Ann Stueve, and Bernice Pescosolido, the public has many possibilities of what causes mental health. The give six possibilities. “[T]he person’s own bad character, a chemical imbalance in the brain, the way the person was raised, stressful circumstances in the person’s life, a genetic or inherited problem, and “God’s will.”
Link, B. G., Phelan, J. C., Bresnahan, M., Stueve, A., & Pescosolido, B. A. (1999). Public Conceptions of Mental Illness: Labels, Causes, Dangerousness, and Social Distance. American Journal of Public Health, 89(9), 1328–1333. https://doi-org.proxy.longwood.edu/10.2105/AJPH.89.9.1328
Welcome to Longwood Blogs. My name is Sharrell Cuffee and this is my first blog. I am creating this blog to bring some information to readers about Mental Illness and Family Stress. It will discuss what the nature of Mental Illness, how the COVID pandemic affects Mental Illness, some different coping strategies that families can use while in a pandemic, and some resources that families can use to help with Mental Illness during a pandemic.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, mental illness is a condition that affects a person’s thinking, feelings, moods, and behavior. Mental illnesses can range from depression to something more severe one like schizophrenia. Some people can have a long-term mental illness or it can be on that occurs occasionally.
