Reply if you agree or disagree with the following post. 200 words.
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Social Support for Parents of Children with Chronic Mental Illnesses
Parents of children diagnosed with mental illnesses have a harder time parenting because they have to be prepared to handle the impacts of mental illnesses on their children’s lives besides performing the basic roles of parents. Therefore, it is important for these parents to receive social support from nurses and their personal relationships. Although both of these forms of social support are beneficial to parents, they each contribute differently to the wellness of parents, which is explained in the paragraphs below.
Having social support from nurses has many potential benefits for parents whose children have been diagnosed with mental illnesses. First, having professional support from nurses helps these parents receive expert opinions on how to effectively manage their children’s illnesses. Parents value the opinions of the nurses because the advice that they provide is often based on the experiences that they have had providing healthcare services to other children with mental illnesses (Aass et al., 2021). Therefore, nurses are capable of advising these parents on the best parental strategies for their children who have been diagnosed with mental disorders. Another benefit of social support from nurses is that they are capable of offering objective opinions to these parents concerning their children. In many cases, nurses do not have a direct relationship with their patients and their patients’ families, which frees them from bias. Therefore, when these parents are faced with difficult situations, nurses are the best people to turn to. The third benefit of parents having social support from nurses who take care of their mentally ill children is that they are assured of confidentiality. Healthcare professionals are bound by confidentiality rules, hence providing a comfortable environment where these parents can openly discuss sensitive matters concerning their children’s health.
On the other hand, the enhancement of the support that these parents receive from their friends, families, and communities can be effective in the following ways. First, having support from social networks reduces the isolation that parents feel when dealing with children with severe mental illnesses (Bradshaw et al., 2019). Therefore, having support from the people close to them will make the parents feel that they have people standing with them through their challenges. Another benefit of the parents having support from their social networks is that it allows them to have shared experiences from connecting with other parents whose children are diagnosed with chronic mental illnesses. Therefore, being part of support groups helps the parents get validation for their feelings and understand that there are other people going through challenges similar to theirs.
