Page 163 - HA Convention 2016 [Full Version]

Special Topics HOSPITAL AUTHORITY CONVENTION 2016

T8.3 Nursing: Helping the Elderly Patients in the Community 09:00 Theatre 2

Strengthening Parenting of Mothers with Depression in Community Psychiatric Services
Ip G
Kwai Chung Hospital, Hong Kong

Parenting nowadays is widely known to be challenging. In the Intensive Care Team of Community Psychiatric Services of
Kwai Chung Hospital, there are many female clients with depression who have to take up the parenting role. Other complex
social and economic issues such as marital discord, poor housing, financial strain faced at the same time have led to further
distress. Coping with mental health condition on one hand and parenting on the other cause these clients to be particularly
stressful. The depressive symptoms often interfere with the provision of child care and mother-child interaction. Evidences
have shown that negative parenting may affect the children’s social and emotional development negatively. It then becomes a
vicious cycle on the maternal depression and parenting behaviours.

Parenting programmes are found to be effective in improving the parental well-being and parent-child interaction. Group-
based positive parenting programme was attempted but considered unsatisfactory due to the common difficulties of group
work encountered in community setting. Besides, unlike the motivated parents in mainstream context, the intense mental
distress of the clients in the Intensive Care Team had difficulty trying out positive parenting behaviours with short-term group
programme.

To modify the practice, one-to-one parenting intervention during home visits can be more flexible and tailored to the clients’
specific conditions. Moreover, the focus of parenting is about the emotional connection between mothers and children, rather
than modifying the difficult behaviours of the children. The parenting interventions consisted of (1) raising clients’ awareness
of emotional arousal like anger and hostility during identified, specific parenting situations, and then employing mindfulness
breathing to calm their emotions; (2) engaging children in play activity together for 10 to 20 minutes daily. As a result, it
appeared that there was improvement in clients’ own emotional awareness as well as reduced frequency of difficult moments
with their children reportedly.

Wednesday, 4 May

161