It can be incredibly challenging to co-parent with an ex who suffers from mental illness. The consequences of their disability are far-reaching, potentially affecting your children’s self-perception.
Read on to learn some coping strategies that can help you cope with your ex-partner’s mental illness.
Diagnoses matter
It’s very important that your ex be evaluated, diagnosed and treated for their mental illness(es). A correct diagnosis can clarify whether your kids will be safe if left unsupervised with your co-parent. As the recent Travis Decker case revealed, some mental illnesses are so crippling that they render a parent unfit to spend unsupervised time with their children.
Parents’ mental illnesses can affect children’s self-esteem
It’s no fun to be the kid whose mother or father shows up for school events wearing inappropriate clothing or interacting with unheard voices and unseen people. That’s just the kind of thing that can make the kids a target for bullying.
Children of mentally ill parents face daily struggles to cope with their parent’s disability. They may concoct elaborate stories to explain their parent’s absence in their lives, only to have that facade destroyed by a single unfortunate display of their ongoing struggle to cope with their reality.
How co-parents can mitigate any damage
Unfortunately, some parents who are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed (it happens frequently) or not adhering to their treatment plans may need a court to intervene and order only supervised visitation with their children.
While this is never ideal, it can be necessary to protect the children’s well-being or even lives. If you know or suspect that your co-parent’s mental instability makes them unfit to spend time with the kids unsupervised, it is your duty as their co-parent to ensure that their safety is always paramount.
