Strength use of adult offspring to cope with PMI while growing up : Which strengths did adult offspring use to cope with parental mental illness?: A qualitative interview study
Kittel, Julynn (2019)
Background
The impact of mental illness of parents on their children is often neglected. If investigated,
negative consequences of parental mental illness (PMI) on children is in the focus. Emerging
popularity of positive psychology counters the emphasis on maladjusted aspects towards
human resilience, human strength, and optimal functioning. Research in this domain has
revealed that children facing adversities, such as PMI, often overcome risk and develop into
resilient adults. Major contribution to bouncing back from adversity is the use of personal
strengths. Therefore, this study contributes to the paucity of strength-based research in the
context of children growing up with PMI, with the aiding research question: Which strengths
did adult offspring use to cope with parental mental illness while growing up?
Methods
Both convenience and snowball sampling was used for recruitment. A semi-structured
interview was conducted with seven adult children that had been growing up with PMI. The
interview focused on strength use as a way of coping. Interviews were transcribed verbatim
and iterative phenomenological analysis steps were taken. Both deductive and inductive
approaches were used to develop the final coding scheme.
Results
Analysing the interviews, two emerged categories highlighted the importance of nine
strengths. The first category namely strengths used to cope directly with PMI consisted of the
strengths reflectivity, optimism, caring, serenity, and empathy. The second category namely
strengths used to indirectly cope with the ramifications of PMI consisted of autonomy,
seeking social connections, seeking an own space, and taking initiative.
Conclusion
The two diverging categories concerning strengths use have highlighted the importance of
both direct and indirect coping with PMI. Strengths supporting direct coping had shown to be
important to make sense of aggravating circumstances and to maintain the relationship with
the parent. Strengths used to indirectly cope with PMI have shown to be crucial for the
offspring to foster personal development and growth despite negative effects of PMI.
Kittel_BA_BMS.pdf