Mental Illness In A Child's Home Environment

Over twenty percent of children in the world either currently have or have had a mental illness. That is roughly one in five kids, or five peers in a typical twenty five person classroom. This is crucial because many mental health disorders to appear during the teen years. Being a fraction of those twenty percent, I believe that mental illness, especially in adolescents, is a serious issue that needs to be scrutinized and dealt with in a more serious manner. I know first handedly from experience that mental illnesses can be due to a child’s home environment. Growing up with mentally unstable biological parents, with a serious drug and alcohol problem, was not the best home environment for a child to grow up in or to even be around. Being the …show more content…
Being a first-hand witness to a bad home environment, I do believe that an adolescent’s home environment, either good or bad, does affects their ability to have a mental illness. If I had not had the parents or home I had, I think that I would not have as many challenges that I encounter today. Another reason in which I conclude that a child’s home environment has an influence in mental illness, is by being in foster care for a little over a year. While in foster care I met tons of foster kids, and even lived with some, that had had incredible stories about their past. The one thing most of these kids had in common was that they were all affected by a mental illness whether during foster care, or beforehand. On the flip side, I do also agree with the fact that some mental illnesses are hereditary such as obsessive compulsion disorder, schizophrenia, depression, etc., but the impact of a living condition is far greater and deeper than genetics. I really became interested in mental illness factors when I was doing a project on