The literature on seriously mentally ill (SMI) women and their parenting experiences establishes that these women are at risk for parenting problems, but because of methodological limitations, fails to identify to what extent these problems can be mitigated. The purpose of the research proposed is to: 1) Identify and describe seriously mentally ill women who have parenting responsibilities in terms of their demographics and personal characteristics, their self-perceptions as mothers, the resources available to them, and the stressors they face, especially concerning care of children. 2) Investigate how these women are functioning in the community as well as the parenting problems they are experiencing. 3) Analyze the relationship between community functioning and parenting problems and relevant variables from the literature review: diagnosis, chronicity, race, age of onset, social supports, and mental health, treatment. 4) Examine the changes over a 12-month period in these women's community functioning and parenting problems and how these relate to changes in resources and stressors and to personal characteristics. The research framework will be based on Moos' Stress-Adaptation paradigm. The initial study sample will include 312 SMI women, recruited from caseloads and public psychiatric hospital referrals of three community mental health agencies in metropolitan Detroit. Data will include interviews of these women, Management Information System data on service utilization, and CMH staff assessments, collected at study entry and 12 months later. The study is designed to address previous deficits in the research literature on serious mental illness and mothering problems by including a large sample with diversity in terms of race, chronicity, etc., by utilizing standardized and more reliable instruments, and by systematically and comprehensively studying personal characteristics as well as environmental context. With these design improvements, the research should produce information relevant to service delivery and to the future development of intervention models for SMI women with children.
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