AGING PARENTS WITH A MENTALLY ILL ADULT CHILD AT HOME

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This small grant proposal explores the physical and mental health of aging parents caring for an adult child with severe mental illness. The subjective and objective burdens of having severely mentally ill family member, often called family burden, are high, and may vary depending on the informal and formal supports provided to families. Along with the burdens of providing care, aging parents experience additional sources of stress associated with age-related changes and losses. Though increasing numbers of aging parents are providing care for a mentally ill child, little is known about the burdens they face, their use of mental health and related services, and the impacts of caregiving on their physical and mental health and related services, and the impacts of caregiving on their physical and mental health. The objectives of this study are: (1) to describe the objective and subjective burdens experienced by aging parents caring for a mentally ill adult child; (2) to identify factors that are associated with lower levels of caregiver burden; (3) to describe more precisely the extent to which formal services to the mentally ill adult child and the family serve as a "buffer" to parental stress; (4) to generate hypotheses for future research on the mental health service needs of aging parents as caregivers to their mentally ill adult children. As part of a study on the impact of lifelong caregiving, data have been collected in Wisconsin on 225 mothers, age 55 and over, who care for an adult child with mental retardation. An additional objective will be to compare the impact of caregiving on aging parents of adult children with mental retardation and mental illness. This exploratory investigation will be accomplished through a nonexperimental, cross-sectional study of 100 mothers, age 55 and older, living with a severely mentally ill adult child. For 2-parent households, fathers also will be asked to participate. Parents of clients who are receiving publicly funded mental health services in Dane County, WI. will be sampled. Data will be gathered using a 2 hour face-to-face interview conducted in the respondent's home. Mothers and fathers will be interviewed separately. The interview will focus on the parent's experience of burden, the use of mental health and related services, unmet service needs, and other critical factors such as the use of coping strategies, and the reliance on informal supports.