I am a mother animal, an animal with powerful instincts to protect and defend her young from intruders and danger. I am a mother whose whole being has become that of caring for her young over and above everything else, even at the risk of her own well-being. Every fibre of my body is wired in this way and nothing can override it. My programming was set millions of years ago and won’t change over my life time.

My instincts are so powerful that they form a deep part of my subconsious, a subconsious that is there for the good of all our animal young. Survival of the species, survival of the fittest. Those with the most powerful instincts will save their young and bring them to adult maturity. My instincts drive me to protect, warn, hunt down, track every danger, obstacle, intrusion which may prevent me from following through on my mothering. These instincts are so powerful that I spend every night dreaming of my children. Every night in my sleep I am looking for them, tracking their movements, sniffing out danger, hunting down intruders, finding my way to them to protect them from danger, fighting anyone in my way to help them in their distress. I am mistrustful, hyper alert, viscious if they are being threatened, fearless, courageous and 100% determined that they will survive at all costs. My own life is unimportant, I would die fighting for my children with not a moment’s hesitation. Their survival and well-being is more important than my last breath.

I grieve for them daily, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. They are alive but not under my protection, I am helpless against intruders, I am unable to nourish them, to comfort them, to teach them and guide them. My life has become half shadow even in bright sunshine. They are not dead, so I am not fully grieving yet I feel like a member of a herd whose young has gone missing and crying out for them to come back to me. I feel like an animal in a cage in a zoo with her young in another compound. I feel like I am pacing, pacing, pacing in circles, with a hunger in my stomach, restless and unable to settle.

Animal children’s instincts are set to seek protection from their mother. To find nourishment and comfort from them, to follow them, to be guided and taught by them, to return to them at night for safety and protection.

How does it feel for them to return to an empty nest? Animal young often die without their mother or fail to thrive. Some literally wither and die as they lose the will to live. They lack skills to defend themselves. They cannot hunt as effectively. They don’t know where to find the best catch or how to find a mate or worse, how to mother their own children as they’ve lost their role model and teacher. Any nature programme teaches these fundamentals and we all accept them as true for animals. Why do we question it for humans?

Male animals in the majority of species are not the primary carer. They don’t chose to stay with their young and do the nurturing. Even when they choose to stick with the mother of their young, they are distant and uninvolved; their role is hunter-gatherer. THey will fight for their children, yes, and often to the death with an overriding instinct to protect mother and child. No-one doubts that the male of the species is a fundamental part of the pack.

But they are not the nurturers. They are not the one that the child seeks out for comfort, even when both parents are present. This is not the way all baby animals are wired - they are wired to be with their mothers.

We all know and accept these fundamental instincts of animal behaviour. Why do we think that homo sapiens are so fundamentally different that these animal instincts and behaviour no longer matter? We are animals to the core. Only our “sophisticated” brain tells us otherwise. Our instincts don’t listen to our brain. That’s why we have them - they are there to overide the brain, to keep us alive and protect us even when our brain misinforms us.

I won’t settle. I won’t give up. I won’t stand aside and watch another person mother my children. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

Dream diary:

Friday 23rd Oct: I dream that I am at a school function with some of the parents; we are waiting for the children to come in to eat lunch at the buffet. I am looking out for my son, oblivious of anything else going on around me. I say to the Chef” you see, Chef, it’s vital that my son eats before the others, he’s got diabetes, he must eat first and eat well….” I spot him and hurry him to the front of the queue and make sure that his plate is piled high with all the best of the food. I settle him down to eat with his friends whilst I go back to see what’s left of the food. Very little. The chef tells me he’s put some aside but when I uncover the plate, the food has gone. Nothing. I go hungry…..but at least I know my son is eating…

Sat 24th October: I dream that I’m skiing with the children in an unknown skiing area. There are very few people around so it gives all of us room to ski really well. We are in the midst of a strange mountainous areas of craggy rocks with deep cravaces to large, expanses of snow. We are clearly in an off-piste area with much of the snow being fresh with no ski marks on it….The sun is out and the day is beautiful…all in all fantastic conditions to ski in.

My kids and I are happily skiing along when my youngest goes to near the edge. Before I can blink, she has fallen over the edge; I hear her screams as she falls. My pounding heart has leaped into my throat, I cannot breathe through panic. I make my way to the edge and look over…My worst fears are confirmed; she is lying face down in the snow at the bottom of the crevace.

She is dead…..

I awake sobbing, shaking, terrified……Thank God…….it’s a dream…..

I came across this article on Justice for mothers: http://justice4mothers.wordpress.com

It’s a fantastic piece of research and well worth a read…..

A quote from a mother not coping with her toddler: “I was so angry with my toddler son when he was tantrumming and refusing to eat, that I grabbed a tuft of hair on the back of his head and pushed his face into his bowl of spaghetti! His face was covered in spaghetti sauce! The look on his face was of total shock but I was still so angry that I did it a second time”!

A group of mothers who had young children got together over coffee one morning. One of them bravely started to confess her worst behaviour with her children and recounted the above situation with her toddler.

Another mother then said “I was so angry with my toddler who was screaming and screaming that I rammed his pushchair into a wall. I knew it wouldn’t hurt him because the front wheels would hit the wall first and I just wanted to give him such a shock that it would stop him from screaming. He wasn’t hurt but I was still raging so I slammed him into the wall again.”

One of the funniest mums then burst out laughing and said “It’s amazing what you will do to get your kids to stop them from their tantrums. My son was throwing a tantrum in the queue in Asda and everyone was staring at him and at me. He was really letting rip. He had done this so many times, and I had tried every parenting tip in the book and nothing I could say or do stopped him from throwing these tantrums. This time, something snapped inside me: I threw myself on the floor beside him and threw my own tantrum. I pounded the floors with my fists, I kicked and kicked my heels into the ground, I thrashed my head back and forth all the time screaming at the top of my voice. Everyone was stunned into silence including my young son who stopped his own tantrum and looked on dumbfounded at his mother throwing her own almighty tantrum! Eventually, he bent down and said in her ear “Mummy, can you get up, you’re embarrasing me!”. She said that he had not thrown a tantrum since! Her strategy worked!!

One of my ex husband’s friends (who is a trained criminal psychologist) related to me the time when one of her babies had been screaming for such a long time that she could no longer tolerate the sound. She went into the baby’s room and thumped the pillow a few inches from her child’s head with frustration. She said she thumped it several times til she had got her rage out of her. She said that she did this because she was so enraged with her baby’s screams that she had wanted to hit her child; this was the closest she came….

All these women are from very good, solid, middle-class homes, with educated, profesionally qualified mothers….They are not from impoverished, drug/alcohol addicted backgrounds and all of them live in comfort with the average amount of stress.

These are all true stories from friends I know in Kingston. None of them have Bipolar; in fact, none of them have been diagnosed with having any form of mental disturbance. None of them have had their children taken from them. During this coffee morning, all the mothers there were laughing at the stories and thanking each other for their honesty. Each mother there said that they had done simarly awful things when they have been at their wits end with their children.

I’m not conding these mothers’ behaviour, nor am I saying that their treatment of their children is acceptable or normal. I was shocked to hear these things yet, if I’m honest, also strangely comforted to hear that other mother’s lose it with their kids too at times.

I haven’t done any of these things and yet I’m the one who’s been told that, because I have Bipolar, I am more at risk of harming my children. None of these mum’s have been told that they have something wrong with them.

So what are the worst things I’ve done as a parent?  I’ll be honest here, painful as it is and you can all be judge and jury as to whether the things I’ve done are so unusual in parenting experiences that the children shouldn’t be with me.

When my eldest daughter was a baby, she screamed so much one night that I screamed back with all my might. I didn’t shake her or hit her, I just screamed too. Then I put her in her cot (gently) and left the room, slamming the door and phoned my mum sobbing with frustration feeling a total failure and feeling terrible for shouting at my baby who, after all, was only being a baby.

When she was a toddler and I had my second son who was only a few months old, all of us came down with a bad bug. Both she and my son were waking me several times a night; she with her illness, he to feed every hour and a half (breastfeeding) and me with my chest infection. I had just fallen pregnant with our third child and was exhausted from the first few weeks of pregnancy as well as from looking after a 2 year old, a 6 month old baby and my third on the way. I felt exhausted, ill, feverish, resentful, desperate…One morning, at around 6am she woke up and threw an almighty tantrum on the stairs. Her tantrums often lasted for an hour at a time. My son then woke up wanting to be fed. My husband wasn’t there to help and my mother was just about waking up in bed. I was trying to cope with all this on my own. I lost it with her. I picked her up roughly and put her in the “time out” place which was our downstairs loo, yelled at her to stay in there until she stopped tantrumming and slammed the door. I was so enraged that I thumped the door (I didn’t hit my daughter at all). Unfortunately, the bit of the door that I hit was glass and I lacerated the tendons in my hand and had to undergo plastic surgery to my hand. My daugher, understandably, was totally shaken by the experience of watching her mother put her hand through the door.

When I was taken to hospital for my hand, the admission nurse asked whether I was post natally depressed. I said I wasn’t sure. I was then assessed and my reading for post natal depression was high and a course of anti-depressants were prescribed.

Social services were informed and my daughter was placed on the child protection register. The health visitor said that I was considered to not be a cause for serious concern because I had chosen to hurt myself in anger rather than hurt my child. I was horrified that I had lost control of my temper in that way. It took my daughter a few weeks before she was back to her normal self.

That’s the worst thing I’ve done to my children.

Other things have included: being so angry with them all, that I shut the door to the house (didn’t lock it) and stormed outside to the end of our drive (about 3 metres in length) and sat in my car with a cup of coffee for 15 minutes to calm down. I could see the house from my car window so I could ensure that they didn’t come out and nobody went in. The children were 8, 6 and 5 at the time. This happened once in total - never again.

I’ve smacked my children when they were toddlers: my eldest daugter when she was a toddler got smacked around 4 times (a smack - not hard hitting), my son around 3 times and my youngest daughter around 2 times. I quickly learnt that smacking ( although highly endorsed by my parents generation and indeed our school system whilst I was still at school where they had the cane), doesn’t work. All it does is to encourage the children to hit each other and others. So I don’t smack. I now resort to shouting when I lose my cool, walking out of the room, slamming doors and being very grumpy.

I have been learning increasingly effective parenting strategies though and gradually I’ve been increasingly able to stop shouting (not 100% yet!) and to walk away when I feel the temperature rising.

According to my exhusband and the Judge, I have also hurt them emotionally by telling them too much about the Court case. Our children were living with my ex husband and I all through the 18 months of litigation and during the actual 10 day High Court hearing. Every day during that Court case, my exhusband and I left the house, caught the train and a taxi and went to the High Court and then came home again the same night. The children knew that we were going to court every day. They knew that the CAFCASS officer had come to see them because they were deciding who the children should live with. They knew that my exhusband was saying that I wasn’t well enough to look after them.

Unsurprisingly, they asked questions - intelligent, perceptive, direct, uncomrpomising questions and asked me to be honest with them in giving the answers. I tried not to give them too much unecessary and upsetting detail, but according to the Judge, I gave them too much information which has caused them distress. I’m not sure how she concluded this given that she hasn’t even met the children, nor was she present to hear the conversation, nor was it recorded…..My children still say that they want me to tell them honestly when they ask questions. I’ve talked with 3 psychologists about how to answer these questions without damaging them emotionally or psychologically, read numerous books on divorce for guidance but apparently I got it wrong.

In short, I have never broken any bones, stubbed out cigarettes, been drunk or on drugs whilst looking after them, left them in the house on their own (which both my ex husband and various nannies have done), not left them in a car on their own (apart from in the garage forecourt whilst paying for petrol), not lost them whilst taking them out, not starved them…….any other thing that I’ve overlooked?

Oh yes there is! I was so cross with them one day that I wrote a long letter describing how I hated their behaviour when they were being so naughty. I described that I felt like hitting them (but stressed that I didn’t do so), that I was such a bad mother, that I was a failure etc. In fact, writing out all the things I was feeling was following the advice of my psychologist who told me that one of the most effective ways to deal with anger is to write it all down on a piece of paper and then throw that piece of paper away. Unfortunately, I didn’t throw it away - my husband found it and used it in Court as evidence that I was an appalling parent.

Yet the two incidents I describe above - the hand through the window and going out to my car for a coffee were brought up in court as classic examples of why I shouldn’t be allowed to parent my children. The letter merely showed as concrete evidence that I was too psychologically disturbed to parent the children.

The fact that my ex husband repeatedly smacked the children when we were married and still does (regularly, I’m told by my children) doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that the CAFCASS report states that my youngest daughter is frightened of him because “he picks me up by my middle and throws me on the bed when he’s angry with me”, doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that he has often shouted at them, threatened them physically, shaken them, slammed the brakes on the car yelling at them that he will “put them out on the pavement” unless they stop screaming, doesn’t seem to matter. The other emotional/psychological things he says and does all don’t seem to matter either.

The fact that my children are scared of him doesn’t seem to matter. They are scared that he will hit them, they are scared that he won’t take their fears seriously and so don’t tell him when they are upset about something, they are scared that he will continue to hurt me. In fact, it was the children who told me that I should go to the Domestic Violence unit because they read the leaflet in the doctor’s surgery and said “Mummy, you should go and talk to these people, because that (the violence) is exactly what daddy’s doing to you.” The fact that the children have witnessed him hitting me and threatening to hit me and shaking me whilst swearing at me and shouting, doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that he hid a knife under his bed together with his porn magazines and videos, doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that, whilst the children are still living with him, he has gone out to lap dancing bars and come home very drunk, doesn’t seem to matter. The fact that he has left the children in the house on their own, doesn’t seem to matter.

Apparently, he’s the “well” one with no mental or psychological problems and is a ”fit” parent, but I’m not.  

Well, what do you all think? Are these things I’ve done appallingly bad? Am I misguided in thinking that I am a capable parent?

Let me know you’re honest thoughts and please do share your worst parenting stories or those of a friend - anonymously - and maybe a picture can emerge of what range of parenting misdemeanors are sufficient evidence of such bad parenting that the children should be taken away from a Bipolar parent…..

Phew! That was brave of me to share those things….

My children are telling me that their father is hitting/smacking them when they are with him. They tell me that this is happening around twice a week.

My ex husband has decided that my son needs orthodontry treatment and so has gone ahead - without my knowledge or consent - to taking him to the orthodontist and getting him braces fitted.

When I heard of this (from my son, not from my ex or from his nanny), I wrote to my ex to ask him why he had done this without my consent and asking him for details of the orthodontist so that I can ask various questions about my son’s treatment.

My ex has not replied to my email and has simply gone ahead and has had the treatment started - braces fixed.

Now I’m really annoyed about this. I agree that my son should have the braces fitted but that’s not the point. The point is that my exhusband had no right to go ahead and give medical treatment to one of our children without my consent. I have parental responsibility, which means:

The Bipolar Organisation is running its Annual conference on 27th October 2007 at King’s College London and this year’s theme is Families and Bipolar Disorder (Conference schedule and available workshops are detailed below together with speakers’ biographies).

To find out more about going to this conference (only £18) then call the Bipolar Organisation or visit their website at
“http://www.mdf.org.uk/”>http://www.mdf.org.ukContact the Bipolar Organisation for more details and membership

Email: jean@mdf.org.uk, web site: http://www.mdf.org.uk/

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

9.30 – 10.00          Registration

10.00 – 10.15        Chair’s Introduction - Helen Waygood, MDF The BiPolar Organisation

10.15 – 11.00        Keynote Presentation: ‘Mental Illness – Understanding the Genetic Dynamic’

                                Professor David Porteous, University of Edinburgh

11.00 - 11.15         Families and Bipolar Disorder: An Introduction

                               Michel Syrett, Editor, Pendulum (MDF)

11.15 – 11.45         Families and Bipolar Disorder: A Global Overview

                                William P. Ashdown, Mood Disorders Society of Canada

11.45 – 12.30      “Planning a Family: A Bipolar Perspective’

                               Dr Ian Jones, Mood Disorder Team, University of Cardiff

12.30 – 13.30            LUNCH

1.30 - 14.30               Workshops – please refer to the plan provided

14.30 – 15.00            Social Break (Tea and Coffee)

15.00 – 16.15           ‘Families and Bipolar Disorder: Personal Perspectives’

                                   -   Making a Marriage Work: Andrew and Heather Heald

                                    -  A Mother and Daughter Perspective: The Two Anns

                                    -  Discussion led by Michel Syrett

16.15 - 16.30         Closing Remarks

                                Helen Waygood, Chair, MDF The BiPolar Organisation

WORKSHOPS:  

Please note that selected workshops will be offered to attendees pre – booking preferences and that the workshops will located within the conference venue, to be advised immediately prior to lunch

1.       Families with Bipolar : “Needs and Support”

         Michel Syrett (MDF)

2.       Art as a Source of Recovery

         Lorraine Nicholson and Jackie Proctor (Perth Plus)

3.    Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: The benefits to Bipolar Disorder

       Dr Warren Mansell - Clinical Psychologist - University of Manchester

 4.    Nutrition and Good Mental Health

       Jane Asto (Eat Right)

Social Get-Together and Opportunity to Relax

Speaker Notes/ Biographies of Speakers

Helen Waygood : Chair of MDF The BiPolar Organisation since January 2007

 Helen is a an HR specialist who has steered the charity through a period of intense change, drawing on almost twenty year’s experience working for the organisation as a volunteer and more recently as a Trustee, as well as a passionate belief in its future. She continues to work as an interim HR consultant in the public and private sector

Professor David Porteous is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and a former Head of Section at the MRC Human Genetic Unit, Edinburgh.

 In 1999, he was appointed Professor of Human Molecular Genetics & Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and also Head of the Medical Genetics Section. He is the current Director of the Molecular Medicine Centre, University of Edinburgh, Director of the Genetics Core at the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility Western General Hospital Campus and on the Executive Board of the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine in Edinburgh, a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, The UK Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK

Michel Syrett is a founding trustee, former chair and guarantor of MDF The BiPolar Organisation.

He is currently Editor of Pendulum the charity’s quarterly journal. He has conducted research into families and bipolar disorder for The Scottish Recovery Network and is the author of The Secret Life of Manic Depression, the booklet that accompanied last year’s BBC2 Documentary Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive. Michel is also a business writer and commentator and the author of 15 books on topics as varied as leadership, innovation and strategy execution

William Ashdown is an active lobbyist and educator, currently Vice President of the Mood Disorders Society of Canada, Founder Member of the Canadian Alliance for Mental Illness and Mental Health and Chairman of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.

Additionally, he serves on a number of boards for organizations in both Canada and the United States. He is a founding member of the Canadian Alliance for Mental Illness and Mental Health (CAMIMH), serving for eight years. Starting with five organizations, the alliance is now made up of 18 national organizations concerned with mental illness and mental health. CAMIMH is one of the strongest voices for mental healthcare in Canada

Dr Ian Jones is Senior Lecturer in Perinatal Studies in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Cardiff. He is co-leader of the Mood Disorder Research Team which is undertaking extensive research into the triggers and provenance of bipolar disorder. Dr Jones is currently undertaking extensive research into the influence of hormones in women who suffer from bipolar disorder and was author of an article on the subject in the Summer 2007 edition of Pendulum, quarterly journal of MDF The BiPolar Organisation

Jane Aston - Jane Aston qualified as a nutritional therapist with the Institute for Optimal Nutrition which was founded by the leading nutritionist Patrick Holford. A member of the British Association for Nutritional Therapy, Jane has been working within organisations supporting people with a disability for over ten years. She wrote a summary of the issues she raises in the workshop on nutrition and mental health in the Autumn 2007 edition of quarterly journal of MDF The BiPolar Organisation.

Jackie Proctor is a Multimedia Artist, working in mediums of painting sculpture and photography. She ran her own gallery for eight years in Fife, Scotland and a ceramic and Sculpture business in Pitlochry for  seven years. She has had many solo exhibitions both at home and abroad. She has pursued her artistic career despite being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18. This year she took on the ambitious community project One Leaf - One Link exhibited in the foyer at the Art at the Heart of Wellbeing conference in Perth, Scotland earlier this month. She will talk briefly about this project at the workshop on Art as a Source of Recovery

Lorraine Nicolson has always been an artist at heart but missed her original vocation until severe depression revealed it to her. Up until then she had been trained as a linguist at university and lived life according to others’ expectations. Having now corrected this error she is keen to explore the possibilities of the healing nature of art with other people based on her own lived experience. She has had solo exhibitions of her artwork and photography which have been seen as the visual expression of her recovery

Dr Warren Mansell works as a practising Clinical Psychologist at Salford Early Intervention Service and as a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Manchester. He completed his PhD at the University of Oxford, and his Clinical Psychology training at Kings College, London. He is a co-chair of the national conference of the British Association of Behavioural Cognitive Therapies and has authored over a dozen recent publications on CBT for bipolar disorder. His work has been covered regularly in Pendulum, the quarterly journal of MDF The BiPolar Organisation and he has been a regular contributor to the charity’s conferences and seminars.

The Two Anns, mother and daughter, are long standing members of MDF The BiPolar Organisation Cymru. They wrote a joint article on the dynamics of being a mother in a caring role and a daughter’s perspective of both family life and marriage as someone who has bipolar disorder in the Autumn edition of , the quarterly journal of MDF The BiPolar Organisation

Andrew and Heather Weald Andrew has been an active member for the Wales branch of the charity for over 14 years, more recently becoming Chair of MDF The BiPolar Organisation Cymru, and is a self management group facilitator. Married to Andrew for six years, Heather gained an MA in Literature at Cardiff University as a mature student. She is a regular contributor on the issues and challenges facing carers in mental health for Pendulum, the quarterly journal of MDF The BiPolar Organisation Cymru.

 This is what the Bipolar Organisation has said about the Bipolar Parenting programme which is currently running at the University of Manchester: http://www.mdf.org.uk/?o=67897Parents with bipolar disorder are taking part in a study that will give them the chance to follow a highly successful parenting skills programme.
Dr Steven Jones and Dr Rachel Calam at the University of Manchester’s School of Psychological Sciences assess the volunteers’ current mood and experiences of parenting with an online questionnaire before offering some of them help via an online version of the Triple P Positive Parenting Programme that featured on the ITV1 television series called ‘Driving Mum and Dad Mad’.
The Triple P system, developed by Australian clinical psychologist Professor Matt Sanders, is known to be effective in modifying and improving children’s behaviour by rebuilding positive relationships, tackling discipline and setting rules and limits.

The first series of ‘Driving Mum and Dad Mad’ in spring 2005 followed the experiences of five families attending a Triple P group. An average of 4.23 million viewers watched the show, with 500 families taking part in a parallel study by Dr Calam, The Great Parenting Experiment. All the parents who followed the TV series and used the strategies shown reported improved behaviour in their child and greater confidence in managing it. The group receiving additional web-based information and email support experienced an even greater improvement, and six months after the series most of the families reported long term benefits and continued improvements to their children’s behaviour.

Dr Jones said: “Parents with bipolar disorder face many challenges in bringing up their children with key facets of the disorder, such as instability of mood and behaviour, impulsivity and anger problems, likely to lead to parenting difficulties. These difficulties can serve as stressors likely to contribute to distress, destabilisation and possible relapse in the parent.  At the same time, recent research suggests that children of parents with bipolar disorder are at increased risk of behavioural and emotional disturbance, which are risk factors both for their own development and for parental mental health.

“This study is a great opportunity for these parents and their children. Triple P is a very good, sound programme that has helped many families. Professor Sanders has used this with depressed mothers and had good results.”

He added: “We hope that this system will prove to be a beneficial, efficient way of delivering help to parents with bipolar disorder and their families, and services can adopt it with little cost to them. There are 60 million people in this country and 1.5% of them are diagnosed with this disorder, which is a lot of people. At the same time there are a very small number of clinical psychologists so face-to-face therapy is expensive and difficult to get. But this study could lead to, say, a Manchester intervention from London.”

Dr Jones and Dr Calam, who are also working with MDF The Bipolar Organisation on this study, are now recruiting more parents who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, have children aged three to ten and online access.

The initial questionnaire will assess family background, parental and family chaos, strengths and difficulties in the face of child behaviour, mood in terms of mania or depression and patterns of stability such as leading an orderly life and getting enough sleep. This will involve a combination of a standardised measure of child adjustment, a self report measure of parental symptoms and questions designed specifically to establish the extent to which parents think that a parenting intervention would be helpful to them and how likely they would be to take part if one was offered, and a self report measure of parental symptoms. It will thus establish whether the parents would have an interest in a self-directed version of Triple P, as this would be a cost-effective way of evaluating delivery of parenting interventions to a geographically dispersed group with variable access to high quality parenting services, and how their current mood symptoms influence this level of interest.

The first questionnaire will be followed by ten weeks on a self directed Triple P programme for some of the sample and no intervention at all for the others (the control group). This will be followed by a second questionnaire to assess how each area has been affected by the intervention and if the families’ situations have changed. The control group will then be offered the chance to take part in the Triple P programme.

· To take part in the study, volunteers can contact reachingabalance@manchester.ac.uk, or register on www.reachingabalance.org.uk

For more information or to arrange an interview with Dr Steven Jones or CASE STUDY contact Media Relations Officer Mikaela Sitford on 0161 275 2111.

The University of Manchester (www.manchester.ac.uk) is the largest higher education institution in the country, with 24 academic schools and over 36 000 students.  Its Faculty of Medical & Human Sciences (www.mhs.manchester.ac.uk) is one of the largest faculties of clinical and health sciences in Europe, with a research income of around £51 million (almost a third of the University’s total research income).

The School of Psychological Sciences (www.psych-sci.manchester.ac.uk) was founded in 2004, and comprises the oldest Psychology department in the UK together with Human Communication and Deafness and Clinical Psychology divisions.  All were rated 5/5 in the last higher education Research Assessment Exercise.
MDF The BiPolar Organisation (http://www.mdf.org.uk/) works to enable people affected by bipolar disorder / manic depression to take control of their lives. It supports and develops self-help opportunities for people affected by manic depression, expands and develops the information services about manic depression, influences the improvement of treatments and services to promote recovery, decreases the discrimination against and promotes the social inclusion and rights of people affected by manic depression

Well, here’s a story of another mother with Bipolar. I hesitate to put this one on this site as her story is a double edged sword in many ways; on the one hand it shows that mothers with bipolar are still able to look after their children despite being very ill, on the other hand if I was as ill as she is (which I am definitely not as I don’t have the symptoms she describes by any stretch…….)  I’d be constantly worrying about whether or not I was damaging the children. I admire the mother for having the courage to talk about how difficult things are for her. I would love to know what her children think……I’m sure she is worried about that otherwise she wouldn’t have put her story on the website that I found it on: “Raising children network” - an Australian website. This website has a section dedicated to parenting with a mental illness and there is a profile of a mom with Bipolar which makes interesting reading…..

http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/parenting_with_a_mental_illness.html#mentalglance

‘I split from the kids’ father at the end of 2000. He claimed I was an unfit mother but eventually custody worked out at 50/50. For the last 18 months things have been getting so much better than they were. Before that I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals and I overdosed and went into a coma for six weeks.  It took me six months to walk again, I nearly died and I had to have heart surgery. Sometime after that I realised how lucky I am with friends and family and how much I love my kids. But it’s still very hard.”

She goes on to say that the children are amazing and that they find her harder to cope with when she’s high then when she’s depressed. Clearly both they and she find the situation hard but are working with it so that they can be together.

The thing that really bothers me about this kind of article is that it doesn’t make it clear whether the person has Bipolar 1 or Bipolar 2. THIS IS A MAJOR DIFFERENCE!!! If you have Bipolar 1 then the highs are indeed very frightening for both the sufferer and those around them. But if you have Bipolar 2, then the lows are the moods that are problematic - not the highs as the highs are so mild that they usually go unnoticed. What I don’t understand with this person in this story is that she says she goes really, really high and yet she overdosed too…………?

The article goes on to give some stats about mental illness and parenting:

Approximately one in five adults has a mental health problem in Australia and there’s a good chance that many of these will be parents.  

• From the age of 35, women are more likely to have mental health problems than men.
• Around 30-35% of people using mental health services have dependent children. 
• Parents in lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to suffer from a mental illness.
• Those with a mental illness are at a higher risk for substance abuse and other health problems, particularly those in the lower socioeconomic groups. 
• Around 1.1 million people in Australia live with depression. 
• Around one in five people will experience depression at least once in their lifetime. More of these will be women than men.

What do you think? Should the mother described be “allowed” to parent her children? Are the children suffering? If they are (and it’s probable that they are), is their suffering worse than it would be if they were without their mum?

I received this very interesting comment yesterday which I have posted but thought I’d give it a post all of its own to highlight it. I am personally going to follow this up and will keep you informed of how it goes……

Hi there

I was very interested to come across this website, and would like to alert you and the readers of this website to a study we are conducting at the University of Manchester. It is a parenting intervention, as parenting can be difficult at the best of times.
If you are bipolar and have children aged between 3 and 10 (inclusive) then please have a look at www.reachingabalance.org.uk

Thank you

I’ve read the site and think the whole concept of helping parents with good coping strategies when the going gets though is vital. If this kind of course were more readily available for parents struggling with Bipolar, it may reduce/prevent the kind of experience I have had with the Courts as presumably this course will help substantially.

I’d be interested in any feedback on anyone who does get on to the programme.