Parents suffering from depression and their engagement with school professionals

Abstract

Background: It is established that schools play a crucial role in supporting child and adolescent mental wellbeing. Parents and school professionals need to work in partnership to achieve the best outcomes for children and adolescents. A key characteristic of schools that successfully engage parents is the formation of trusting and collaborative relationships. Aim: To address a gap in the literature and present the day-to-day experience that parents suffering from depression have of relating with school professionals and to acquire insights into barriers and facilitators of the parent-school relationship. These findings would be used to make recommendations for professionals working in education and for inter-agency collaboration. Design: A qualitative study method adopting Braun & Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis. Methods: Parents suffering from depression and who have children aged 5-16 were invited to participate. Intermediary persons were mental health professionals in Community Mental Health Clinics. Purposive sampling was chosen to recruit participants. Six mothers agreed to participate. Data were gathered through individual semi-structured interviews and analysis was guided by Braun & Clarke’s six phases of analysis. Results: The themes identified to represent the experiences of parents were: ‘Children’s needs prompt engagement’, ‘Ease of access matters’, ‘The value of being understood’ and ‘Understanding the silence and distancing’. Conclusion: The parents interviewed valued collaboration with school professionals to address concerns related to their children. They emphasized the importance of an understanding approach from professionals which in turn encouraged engagement. However, blame and judgement caused them to withdraw. It is recommended that mental health literacy programmes for professionals have engagement with parents as a core component. Furthermore, interagency discussion about the fear parents have of losing custody of their children is suggested as this stops parents from opening up and seeking help from professionals.