Resources

Since the late 1980’s, when the children’s mental health family movement came onto the national scene, it has tried to reverse the perception of fault being placed on the shoulders of the parents raising children with mental health challenges. Similar to other disorders and diseases, early ideas about the causes of mental illness were crude at best. Textbooks published as recently as 1970 claimed mothers as the root of most mental illnesses. As more was understood about the origin of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in children, the residue of those early ideas have continued to taint many child serving systems.