Mentally Ill Mothers of Young Children: Analysis of In‐patient Chart Reviews

When a mother is hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, nurses are presented with an opportunity to assess parenting disorders and identify early parent‐child disturbances. The purpose of this article is to discuss the parenting issues recorded in 21 charts of hospitalized, mentally ill mothers who had a child less than 6 years old. Based on this chart renew, three themes related to parenting young children emerged: (1) how psychiatric symptoms affected the mother's ability to parent her children; (2) the difficulty the mother had riding the energy to care for her children; and (3) the mother's need to be with her children in spite of her difficulty caring for them. None of the charts contained assessments of the quality of the mother‐child relationship or the mother's ability to resume her maternal role following discharge. The implications of these findings for nursing practice, education and research are discussed.