The Economic Status of Parents With Serious Mental Illness in the United States

Objective: Parents with serious mental illness may be vulnerable to financial insecurity, making successful parenting especially difficult. We explored relationships among parenting, serious mental illness, and economic status in a nationally representative sample. Method: The sample included all wo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychiatric rehabilitation journal 2014-09, Vol.37 (3), p.242-250
Main Authors: Luciano, Alison, Nicholson, Joanne, Meara, Ellen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Employment
Employment - statistics & numerical data
Employment Status
Female
Human
Humans
Male
Mental Disorders
Mental health
Mentally Ill Persons - statistics & numerical data
Middle Aged
Parenthood Status
Parents
Parents & parenting
Poverty
Poverty - statistics & numerical data
Rehabilitation
Serious Mental Illness
Severity (Disorders)
Social Class
Socioeconomic factors
Socioeconomic Status
United States - epidemiology
Young Adult
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Summary:Objective: Parents with serious mental illness may be vulnerable to financial insecurity, making successful parenting especially difficult. We explored relationships among parenting, serious mental illness, and economic status in a nationally representative sample. Method: The sample included all working-age participants from the 2009 and 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (n = 77,326). Two well-established scales of mental health distinguished participants with none, mild, moderate, and serious mental illness. We compared economic status by parenthood status and mental illness severity. Results: Rates of employment were low for parents with serious mental illness (38% full time and 17% part time among mothers; 60% full time and 9% part time among fathers) compared with parents with no mental illness (50% full time and 19% part time among mothers; 85% full time and 5% part time among fathers). Mothers and fathers with serious mental illness were twice as likely to fall below the U.S. Census poverty threshold as their peers without mental illness. Conclusions and Implications for Practice: Parents with serious mental illness are less likely to be employed than those without mental illnesses, and are highly likely to be living in poverty. Reducing poverty by helping parents with serious mental illness achieve better jobs and education is likely to translate into family stability and better outcomes.
ISSN:1095-158X
1559-3126
DOI:10.1037/prj0000087