Parenting in Children and Adolescents with Psychosis.

ABSTRACT

Need and Purpose of review Psychotic symptoms appear in children and adolescents in the most crucial years, during the individual’s career development. The challenges faced by parents of psychotic children are in dealing with their disruptive behaviours, negative symptoms, cognitive deficits, delusions and hallucinations. This paper presents an overview of the childhood psychosis and how parenting can be done effectively for this population. Methods: Articles were retrieved from the Medline, Cochrane database, Google Scholar, Medscape; using the search terms ‘parenting and childhood psychosis’, and ‘childhood psychoses; and standard textbooks were consulted. Main conclusions: Educating parents how to recognize early symptoms, explaining treatment adherence, side effects of medications along with non-pharmacological measures like dealing with expressed emotions, lowering expectations, enhancing social supports, healthy lifestyle, and making patients independent. Awareness, early identification and effective parenting for psychosis may help bridge the wide gap between scarce skilled mental health professionals, inefficient resources and large paediatric population.