STRESSED PARENTS

The Impact of Stress on Families and Children

The Impact of Stress on Families and Children

Introduction

Children with depressed parents get stressed out more easily than children with healthy parents—if the depressed parents are negative toward their child. The children get stressed out seeing their parents depressed. There are some studies which have been conducted on the impact of stressed parents on their children. The parents normally think that their children do not know that they are under stress. They do not realize that they are putting the emotional and physical health of their children in danger. Some children can indulge in the wrong company or habits to get rid of that depressed and stressed feeling. The parents must educate themselves as well as their children in how to cope with stress in a healthy way. This paper deals with the impact stress causes on families, especially children.

Discussion

Depressed, stressed and anxious parents can make their children physically and mentally unhealthy. According to studies, the parents stress can cause a strong impact on the health of their children as well as their personal health. However, there have been very few studies on the impact of a person's health on others. In a study conducted by Dr. Mary Caserta and her members, 120 children aged between four and eleven and their parents were monitored. The parents of the children kept a weekly diary of their child's illness and measured their temperature when they got sick. On every sixth month, the parents filled certain questionnaires regarding their own health and stressful events or conflicts in the family.

The result of the research indicated that there is a direct link between depression and stress amongst the parents and increased chances of their children becoming ill. Those children of parents who have deep psychiatric symptoms also have more active immune systems as per the measurements done through the level of natural killer cells and the other components of the immune system within their blood. This shows that the immune system of these people work harder than the others. The research helped in "understanding the biological impact of multiple sources of chronic stress in families on specific immune functions in a sample of healthy children", the team wrote in the Brain Behavior and Immunity journal. The total number of illnesses was significantly higher in children whose parents showed excessive levels of emotional stress, and also had an intense immune activity because your body was working more to protect themselves from infection (World Bank, 2003).

Majority of the parents do not realize that their stress can become a major reason for their children's illness. They do not realize that it has a major impact on the children's health. According to the findings of an American Survey on Stress released by the American Psychological Association (APA), there are long-term effects of chronic stress on the emotional and physical health of the entire family. The study states that, “Americans appear to be caught in a vicious cycle where they manage stress in ...