The importance of the family in mental health

This is how the family context acts favoring or preventing psychological disorders.

The family conditions how we are in many aspects. Our parents, siblings, grandparents and even aunts, uncles and cousins teach us values, customs, our mother tongue and the way we relate to others, aspects that shape our identity and personality.

However, for better or worse, the family also conditions our emotional stability, offering us a stable and healthy environment in which we can develop properly or, on the contrary, an environment marked by insecurity and uncertainty, which destabilizes us.

The importance of the family in mental health is a fact.a reality that we are going to explore and analyze below.

Why does the family matter in mental health?

The family plays a fundamental role in most people's lives. There are many situations in which important decisions are made based on the family, on what they have taught us throughout our lives, on their well-being and on the way we relate to them once we are adults.

Relationships with our nuclear family greatly determine our way of being and how we relate to other people, being a factor that also has a great impact on our mental health.

In all families there are events that put our mental health to the test and condition our mental health.. There are minor ones, such as a momentary argument between our parents, and there are more serious ones, such as a divorce or the loss of a parent at an early age. Living these situations when we are small influences our emotional stability, and can be experienced in a particularly intense way and, if it does not end well, it can lead to psychological problems.

The family: an environment that conditions our life

The family is an environment that conditions our life and, of course, our mental health. The ideal environment for a person to grow is always a healthy and functional family, regardless of its structure and whether or not there are Blood ties among its members.. Today we know that the fact that a family has a father and a mother, is single-parent or is a homosexual marriage does not condition the health of the individual, but the parental style exercised by the parents towards their children.

A functional family is one in which parents know how to educate their children well, raising them in an environment in which affection and love are present, but without letting the children do whatever they want. The key is to know how to give love while being responsible in the care of children, applying a democratic system of upbringing, and fulfilling the three main functions of the family.and fulfilling the three main functions that all good parents should fulfill: protection, care and affection.

If as children we were given protection, care and affection in a proper way, we also learned that these are what we should give to our children, which works as a protective factor.This works as a protective factor both when we develop mental disorders and when our children develop them. On the other hand, if these needs were not met, it is more difficult for us to offer them to our children without the help of other partners in parenting, since we cannot offer what we do not have or receive, unless we learn it consciously and voluntarily once we are adults.

Just because we have reduced parenting to three basic functions does not mean that they are easy. Giving protection, care and affection to our sons and daughters is a complicated task that requires deep reflection, patience and self-knowledge in order to identify mistakes we may make in our parenting that, although we may not realize it, can have a very negative impact on our children's health. Although all good parents want the best for their children, this does not mean that they do it, even if they do not do it with bad intentions..

For example, comments such as "you're stupid", "don't be dramatic", "you could do much better" and so on, far from "motivating" them, can make them think that they are worthless, that they are not valued even by their own parents and, taking into account the importance that our parents and other authority figures acquire in our growth, this is very harmful to their mental health, especially in their self-esteem, self-concept and way of relating to others.

Moreover, children, whether they are children or adolescents, learn to behave according to what they see in their parents. If a son or daughter behaves disrespectfully towards his or her parents, far from thinking that it is because he or she is a bad person or a black sheep, it is quite likely that he or she behaves this way because he or she considers that his or her parents do not respect him or her or, also, because his or her parents have behaved disrespectfully both with him or her and with other people in the family environment, such as grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles or cousins.

Mental health of a family with a member with psychopathology.

In most cases, a family member with a mental disorder is a major setback for the family, especially for the person who is suffering from the disorder.Especially for the caregiver. Family members can feel very overwhelmed and stressed as a person they have known all their lives changes, ceases to be the way he/she used to be and now requires a lot of care. The psychopathology of a loved one is experienced as a loss and, at the same time, as the acquisition of a heavy burden.

Family members of persons with mental disorders are more likely to experience feelings of grief and loss, which although they wax and wane throughout life eventually develop into deep and intense chronic grief. They live on a constant roller coaster ride, the ups and downs of which depend directly on the relapses and remissions of the family member's psychopathology..

Like families in general, families who have a family member with a mental disorder represent a diverse group. Each family member has unique experiences, needs and concerns. Thus, each family may behave differently with their family member, depending on the diagnosis and the resources they possess.

Over time, albeit with great difficulty and with the help of psychologists and support groups, family members caring for a family member with a mental disorder eventually come to accept their symptoms, learn to cope with the disorder and manage it in the best possible way. However, this does not this does not take away the deep emotional pain, stress and anxiety they experience as a result of caring for a mentally unstable person.This is especially noticeable in families with children who have a mental health problem.

This is especially noticeable in families whose member with psychopathology has a personality disorder, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and has little awareness of his or her disorder. It is hard to put up with a person who is incoherent in his or her behavior, who constantly changes his or her mind and who blames others for his or her mistakes or even invents that he or she is receiving some kind of aggression when, perhaps, it is he or she who, without realizing it, is psychologically mistreating the people who care for him or her.

Family as origin of psychopathology

The families that do not know how to face healthy moments of crisis and do not offer an environment of peace and emotional stability end up weakening. In fact, this type of families instead of promoting the healthy development of each of its members, can become a risk factor in their mental health.. Abuse, mistreatment, addictions and overly authoritarian upbringing contribute to the emergence of traumas, frustrations and various psychopathological symptoms that will eventually crystallize into a mental disorder in adulthood if left untreated.

A television program that reflects this sad reality is the American documentary series "My 600-lb Life". This program tells the story of people with type IV obesity who have become bedridden, unable to move freely even to relieve themselves, and who need surgery to survive in the long term.

People who reach weights over 250 kilos do not reach this weight out of sheer carelessness or laziness. A person does not reach a body mass index of 80 by sitting on the couch one day, opening a bag of chips and eating until one day he or she realizes how much weight he or she has gained. The "stars" of this program have eating behavior problems, an addiction to food that is the result of having had a childhood marked by violence, economic poverty and, in many cases, addictions and sexual abuse by people close to them.

The relationship between the program participants and their families is extremely dysfunctional, not only because of the family's past but also because of the present. The family, far from being an emotional support for the person with extreme obesity and a motivator for change, on many occasions configures the environment that has led to this situation, causing a lot of stress that pushes the person to eat.

In other cases, it often happens that the parents feel a lot of guilt. for what happened to their child during childhood, especially if an uncle or family friend sexually abused their child and they didn't realize it or they themselves were drug-addicted and neglectful parents. To compensate for not being there for them in their childhood, parents often become "enablers," bringing and cooking the food themselves, since their nearly 300-pound adult child is bedridden and can't go shopping on his own.

All this is evidence of the power of the family in the development of psychopathology and in its preservation. Dysfunctional childhoods are an important source of mental disorders, and dysfunctional adulthoods contribute to the maintenance of psychopathology.. Families with toxic, dysfunctional and pathological dynamics make patients, in this case morbidly obese, unable to progress or achieve their goals in the short, medium and long term.