Avoir un parent malade mental : repères diagnostiques et thérapeutiques

Abstract: In the pedopsychiatric consultations, much of children present a symptomatology, which if it''s personal for them, is related to the psychic functioning of the parent. In the light of a clinical situation, the article develops various impacts in the child confronted with the mental disease of the parent, and specific when it''s about psychosis. The impact of the process psychotic of the parent is not without effect on the glance and the attention paid to the child. The aspects of the anguish, depression, culpability, opposition, differentiation, parentification and shared psychosis are thus successively approached. The author evokes then some specific items of the treatment while discussing the questions of the framework of work, the items of the meeting with the child around the representations and of the stakes of the relation between the sick parent and the child. At the convenient time, it will be necessary to make it possible to the child to meet the parent in his reality, i.e. the personal aspects of his mental illness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]