Parenting with a mental illness: One of Lynne Malcolm's favourite programs
All In The Mind
ABC Australia
4.5 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Being a parent can be very rewarding, but if you are managing your own mental health you may not be able to be the parent you’d like to be. It can be sad and confusing for kids too—and they often take on a caring role.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an ABC podcast. |
| 0:08.6 | Hi, it's All In The Mind on RN. I'm Lynne Malcolm, with the next in our series featuring highlights |
| 0:17.6 | from my time in the hot seat of All In The Mind. |
| 0:28.2 | In this program from 2017, what happens in families when a parent becomes mentally ill? |
| 0:34.2 | Sometimes my mummy has very happy days. |
| 0:40.3 | She laughs and lasts and talks to me all day long. She hardly stops talking and she wants to do everything except sleep. Sometimes my mummy has very sad days. She cries and cries |
| 0:47.3 | and hardly talks to me at all. She's very quiet and she doesn't want to do anything besides |
| 0:53.3 | stay in bed or sleep. When mommy keeps on laughing or crying and she doesn't want to do anything besides stay in bed or sleep. |
| 0:55.3 | When mummy keeps on laughing or crying and she can't stop, Daddy says it means she's sick. |
| 1:01.6 | He says her brain isn't working properly and she can't look after herself or me. |
| 1:06.5 | He says she needs help to get better. |
| 1:09.4 | That's from the children's picture book, My Happy Sad Mummy. |
| 1:13.2 | It tells the story from a little girl's perspective |
| 1:16.1 | about living with her mum who has bipolar disorder. |
| 1:20.6 | The author, Michelle Vassaloo, explains why she wrote My Happy Sad Mummy. |
| 1:26.7 | It was almost a matter of need for me. |
| 1:29.8 | I was first diagnosed with bipolar in 2007, and I had a manic episode and ended up in hospital. |
| 1:37.3 | And at the time, my children were three and six years of age. |
| 1:41.6 | And being a children's author, we had a lot of picture books in our house, |
| 1:46.2 | and we used to spend a lot of time reading those together. So when I got ill, I asked the |
| 1:52.9 | hospital staff, the nurses, if there was a picture book about bipolar specifically, or |
| 1:59.9 | mental illness in general. And there's only a handful of books |
... |
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