Parental Mental Health and the Impact on Children: Summary

This report aims to cover the full spectrum of mental health and mental wellbeing issues that parents feel negatively impacts on their parenting and the lives of their children. As a result, we considered it important that the report does not focus exclusively on parents who have been diagnosed with a mental health illness. We commissioned Amárach to carry out a survey looking at all parents who felt they had mental health and wellbeing issues. One in five parents (20%) said they currently had poor mental health. Almost half said their mental health was ok (46%) and one third (34%) said it was good. Two-thirds (67%) of parents said that they would have, at times in the past, had worse mental health than they do at present. Generally, two thirds of parents said that at some point, they had poor mental health and wellbeing. A substantial proportion of parents reported feeling anxious, depressed and/or overwhelmed most or some of the time.

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