[Bifocal Perspective in the Work with Families with Mentally Ill Parents]

Background: Mentally ill parents pose a risk factor for the transgenerational transmission of mental disorders. Contemporary psychiatry mainly focuses on the individual and patients are not always recognized as being parents.

Objective: The development and evaluation of a training program for mental health professionals to support a family orientation in psychiatric treatment by using a bifocal perspective, which keeps an eye on the index patient and the family with a focus especially on children, are presented.

Methods: In order to establish the bifocal perspective in attitudes, knowledge and skills, a half-day training program, consisting of a lecture and a seminar was developed. This was carried out as part of the Children of Mentally Ill Parents -Research Network (CHIMPS-NET) consortium at seven locations in Germany in the respective adult, pediatric and adolescent departments of psychiatry. The needs were evaluated before the training using an online questionnaire. The implementation was accompanied by a qualitative analysis of memory protocols of the trainers.

Results And Discussion: The training could be successfully carried out with 120 participants, whereby the target of a comprehensive training of the complete personnel across occupational groups could not be realized, also partly due to the pandemic, and the exercising elements of training could not all be utilized. The evaluation of the questionnaire, which was completed by approximately 50% of the participants showed that the group of participating psychologists and physicians already had a strong family orientation. The qualitative analysis of protocols from all locations documented a strong need for networking across institutions and clear standard procedures, e.g. in dealing with child maltreatment.