Family members struggling with mental health and meeting their own needs.
In the Young Families Project we speak to parents and siblings of children with intellectual disabilities about their lives. Our findings are presented in a series of essays.
This is part 5.
In this fifth and final essay (PDF) we focus on on the mental health and wellbeing of parents and siblings, and how that often goes unnoticed.
“You feel like you have failed, failed to have a child like this, failed to not be able to manage it, and then failed because there is nobody who cares about your mental health. By luck there was one person who stepped in and saw how I was struggling. It’s good they did, because otherwise, I don’t know if I would be living today. It’s really hard and nobody’s there. We need systematic help at the beginning, at the very beginning, from the diagnosis. It’s important to look after the parents or the carers and ask: ‘Are you okay?’ And I think nobody is really ok, even if they say they are.”
Read the full essay here: Nobody is really ok, even if they say they are (PDF)
Young Families Project
- Introduction: What parents and siblings of children with intellectual disabilities face every day.
- If you don’t know how to navigate the system then you are lost and your child is too.
- Financial hardships in the family, and the difficulty of balancing work and care.
- Fighting for a good education for their loved one with an intellectual disability, and balancing school and care.
- Struggling with mental health and wellbeing and neglecting their own needs.