Family
This country can't afford the adoption machine, the childrens homes, Social Services, homeless care leavers, and all the misery-causing paediatric expert/connoisseur types that involve themselves powerfully in family life when they can. I'm talking about the sort of people who think they know how to love children much more than good parents do. If yourself and your partner are both SMI sufferers then be warned and think extremely carefully before starting a family.
The hoops that you are expected to jump through by Social Workers and the medical professionals that become involved are sometimes inhuman and downright cruel. Such people can seem as if they're from another planet or species for all the understanding they exhibit. Having a baby is very beautiful but a hugely demanding commitment for any of us, SMI or not.
If you do choose to become a parent then you are choosing to become fully responsible for meeting a vulnerable person's every need in life for a long, long time. If you become ill with a MH relapse or such in the future and your partner is in any way in difficulty then you're looking at your child going into foster care or other nightmarish possibilities. If you do have strong and resilient love though, parenting is very fulfilling, even given a SMI. Real natural mental health for the love of it.
Breaking up your parenting while your child is young will tend to involve Social Services. A course of events that is in no way inevitable but a threatening possibility. Just be honest, intelligent and reasonable with SS. Breakup can be an horrendouly distressing thing. It happened to me as a Dad and I'm still getting over it. Family breakup doesn't help psychosis to put it mildly. I managed to keep contact with, and care of, my son to a great extent while he was growing up. Working with people is a strong trait in my life. Good parenting in the MH community can be done and is a joy generally speaking.
As a parent with a SMI one of the most important blessings I have is "internal diagnostics" or insight into my MH condition. The first thing I did when hallucinated voices started back in 1983 was read a psychiatry textbook. Then I put myself in the local hospital psychiatric unit (self referall). The way psychiatry works these days remains concordant. UK Psychiatry will never interfere with your love of life, it will support it. Any change you need to make to life will be your own. Fairly much all the NHS will do is prescribe medication, depending on your condition.
Social Services however are a fish out of a different kettle where children are involved. With Social Workers just be yes/no/please/thankyou. They might not understand much else and can be all too easily incredibly powerful. Being in conflict with SS can cause you and your child(ren) extreme pain and distress. All the machinery of state is there for reason to prevail, and nothing unreasonable. Keep it on the side of your child(ren) and yourself.
No 2 Abuse
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©2020 Andrew Batty