Att vara barnet - En studie om barn till psykiskt sjuka föräldrar

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to examine children living with a mentally ill parent and see what help and support there is for these children and if it is enough. The study was based on nine posts on the website Kuling, which is a website for children with a mentally ill parent, and five qualitative, semi-structured interviews with professionals working with this issue. The interviews took place in a big city in Sweden and were made separately. The collected material was analyzed with a qualitative coding process based on eight categories, four from the posts on Kuling: responsibility, coping, consequences and interventions, and four from the interviews: the child’s situation, the child’s needs, interventions and co-operation. The crisis theory was then used for further analyze of the results. We found that the children and the professionals in many areas have similar opinions of what is needed for the children, among them are the importance of information, a working daily life, recognition, talking with a professional and safety in the surrounding network. The differences that we found were if the help and support that exists in these areas are enough. A conclusion we made is that the professionals’ insecurity in talking with children about their situation can be a contributing factor to the differences in experienced help and support. Keywords: mentally ill parent, children, interventions, Kuling, professionals.