“She’s not the child we had”: How parents reconstruct their child’s identity to include violentand with mental illness

AbstractThis study examines the grief experiences of parents raising children with serious mental illness and violent tendencies (SMI/VT). We conducted in-depth interviews with 32 self-identified parents of young and adult children with SMI/VT. We employed a modified version of grounded theory for the data analysis, which revealed that the grief of parents of children with SMI/VT parallels that of parents whose children have died. To cope with their grief, participants reconstructed their child’s identity in one of two ways: (1) my child is absent (i.e., my child does not exist, this person with SMI/VT is not my child), or (2) my child is present (i.e., my child is here but the SMI/VT is not a part of my child). We frame our findings through the concept of ambiguous loss. Our manuscript concludes with recommendations for practitioners.