Mental Health and Fatherlessness

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This directed more toward those whose fathers were either distant, completely absent, or abusive.

Do you think there’s a correlation between the development of your mental illness and the lack of a father? What do you think of that theory that a lot of behavioral problems are associated with a breakdown of the family?

I’m asking because my own parents separated when I was ten, and from then on I began having emotional problems/depression and eventually developing psychosis. I hate to blame someone else for my malfunctions, but I can’t deny my own personal correlation. I’m wondering if there are others out there who agree with this theory. I’d love to hear from people who disagree and have studies/sources that can debunk it as well.

  • Absent Father
  • Distant Father
  • Abusive Father

0 voters

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My mom became mentally ill to take care of kids so my dad divorced her and remarried. My sisters and I were little Cinderella’s. We ran away from home.

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Sorry about that. Sounds rough.

My own parents separated but didn’t divorce for whatever reason. It was a strange stalemate they had going. But then they would use us as proxies against the other parents. Most of them siding with Dad, the rest of us siding with Mom. It was pretty lousy behavior all around.

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My dad was distant growing up. Focused on his work and suffering his own mental health problems. Now he’s a lot closer and I’m doing much better

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My dad was my best friend in the whole works, but he died when I was 18. That triggered a psychotic episode for me, but I think it had to do with a whole lot more than just him being gone. I was left in charge of my younger siblings, and I was not old enough for many of the responsibilities I suddenly had. Plus, everyone was always watching me, waiting for me to screw up so they could call CPS. It was like living under the world’s most judgmental microscope.

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The word ‘■■■■■■■’ means a child born out of wedlock and also it’s an insult.

Why is it also an insult? Because it was believed (historically it may be different now) that kids without a father would be anti-social.

I don’t think being fatherless itself causes mental illness. The effects can be different for everyone, if someone has a good mother then being without a father might not be a big deal in their lives, perhaps moreso for females.

The effects of being fatherless affect everyone differently. Maybe it contributes to more stress in a person’s life that can trigger mental illness.

It’s interesting how the docs say to us things like ‘bad parenting doesn’t cause mental illness cos some people with bad parents don’t develop mental illness.’

Are they serious using such arguments, or idiots? They must know it’s a more complex issue than that. It’s like they’re saying noone can die from eating a peanut, cos most people can eat peanuts with no harmful effects.

They are aware of allergies and how doing one thing can affect one person and not another, because of genetics.

I’m rambling so I’ll shut up, just my 2 pennies.

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My father had his peculiarities, but that is not what I am writing about. I wrote a poem called “The Many Fathered Son” about a situation that develops from time to time. It is where a woman has kids, and their father has left them. Then the woman keeps marrying totally rotten men, and family life is a nightmare. I can think of two guys offhand who grew up in this situation. One of them was in the mental hospital with me for a year. He told us stories in group about his childhood that were like they came from the twilight zone. One time he got up from his bed and went to their kitchen. His mother was lying face down on the floor in a pool of blood, and her current husband was hitting her and saying, “You deserve to bleed.” He said another time his sister had a broken arm. Her arm had just come out of its cast, and their current father was behind her with her arm pulled up as he was pushing her up the stairs. His sister was yelling, “It’s going to break! My arm is going to break!” Jerry (name changed) was standing at the top of the stairs, and he hauled off and kicked the abusive guy in the face, and he went tumbling down the stairs. Jerry said the guy got up and said, “I’m going to kill you!” Unfortunately, I think Jerry probably internalized a lot of the anger he grew up with. I saw him make some very aggressive comments to a female family therapist who sometimes sat in on our groups. One time Jerry was talking about a cop who had arrested him, and Jerry said, “I turned around and kicked him in the balls harder than I have ever kicked anything.” I kind of went “ouch” inside, because I used to tussel with Jerry

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Hard to say if it’s corrolated or not. The whole nature vs nurture thing is kind of put on hold with sz and its related issues, because it’s been said to happen from both, not just one of the two.

I had a great grandmother who was sz, but no one else in my family has any signs of it, outside of my aunt, whose thyroid is failing so horribly it’s tough to say she’s sz or maybe just has thyroid problems (which she won’t take meds for). She believes she communicates with dead people and is a highly powered clairvoyant who can have her way whenever she wants, despite being proven again and again that she cannot have her way.

Me personally, my biological father cheated on my mom when I was a baby, so outside of a handful of visits, I didn’t really know him up until I was 10. I had a step dad who was taking care of me, but he stepped out of the picture for my biological dad because he felt it was the right thing to do.

I moved in with my biological dad for a few years, and he and my step mother are just twisted beings, so they made life very hard on me. They tried to replace my mother and step father and it caused problems.

I would say for me, I probably wouldn’t have developed sz if I hadn’t been stunted, stripped of dignity, and made to feel weak and forced to be dependent on my father and step mother. If I hadn’t moved back in with him, I’d probably be running my own company right now.

Is it fair to say he’s probably responsible for me developing sz? No, but I did not have symptoms of sz until shortly after I moved in with him, at the age of 12. Things only got worse for me over the years because of him and his inability to show affection in a meaningful way besides “That’s my kid” when we’ve been out together.

Recovery is a step by step process, but identifying triggers and preventing them from being a part of my life is a big part of why I can present as normal to most people. My biological father is a trigger.

This was really long and I’m sorry, but yes, I feel that abusive parents can contribute to developing psychosis, especially if there’s a genetic history in your family.

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9

I’m not sure which to pick. I had an abusive stepmother and a father who enabled her and never stood up for us. He was great until he married her when I was 10. Then, while he didn’t abuse us himself, he defended her abuse of us and became very neglectful. At 15, I was abandoned by him.

I think it had a profound impact on my mental illness. My delusions are basically that I’m worthless, evil, or downright guilty. Which was more or less the message he sent me every day.

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my REAL dad wasnt super active in my life, but we have a good relationship and i dont think he negatively affected me much. my step dad who i was around more was abusive to me after returning home from a year in iraq, and i spent a good chunk of childhood being abused by him and my brother, which definitely had a negative impact on me

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My father and mother divorced when I was in 3rd grade. My dad just kind of disappeared. I would only see him when my mom went to pick up child support, but they would meet at his workplace, so it wasn’t like I was spending time with him. I think that my sisters and I all felt an empty hole that he should have filled. We were all teenage parents- all of us, by the time we were 16. My oldest sister got married when she was 17; my youngest sister married at 14, and I married at 18. My youngest sister and I both have sza. We’ve both made suicide attempts. My dad is now in our lives, and he has worked to heal our broken relationship. I’ve forgiven him, but I still bear scars.

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I have an abusive father and a psychotic mother but I don’t blame them I believe it was simply genetics and ** normies at school that made me sick.

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13

Probably the stress of the situation might have triggered your schizophrenia but you probably would have gotten it anyway. The popular theory in the 1950’s was that a cold, distant mother caused schizophrenia. So poor mothers had to take the blame for schizophrenia until that theory was finally proved wrong. I think it’s safe to say that you can extrapolate and see that fathers don’t cause schizophrenia either. Poor parenting may make existing schizophrenia worse but if dysfunctional parents caused schizophrenia than everybody on the planet would have schizophrenia.

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My mother was mentally I’ll or at least needed therapy. She divorced my father on grounds of abandonment. He was gone before I was born, and I was raised in my grandparents’ house. I was a loner. Grandfather was abusive, and Mother somewhat abusive. According to my Grandfather, my father had sz, so I really think that’s where I got it from. It seemed perfectly normal to me as a child to only have a mother and live in my grandparents’ house because that’s all I ever knew. I guess you could say the environment I was raised in triggered my development of sz, but I really don’t know.

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There’s little special about the father. And there’s little special about the mother, too. What’s important is that you have good, caring and consistent attachment figures. Biological similarity may make things a little easier, but even that isn’t too important. When you’re a child, you need someone to be there and love you, who is going to stay there. Separation from an attachment figure is associated with mental illness. So yes, this likely affected the development of your mental illness, but it probably had nothing to do with your father being your father, and not your mother or your stepfather.

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My dad was a drunk who abused me psyhic and fizic. I remember one time he hit me so hard when I was 10 that I piss my pants then he made me go to the store to buy him alcohol, he did not even let me change first.
One time he hit me with his first that he broke my nose and since then I have septum deviation.
He was a real dictator, my mother sleept for years where the pigs and cows slept because she was afraid of him at night.
He hang himself in a room who lock it from inside. Me, my sister and my mother we found him when I broke the door. He was there hanging in the middle of the room. For 2 weeks whenever I close my eyes I could see him hanging there all purple.

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wow what a story…

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My Dad killed himself when I was 3 and I have no contact with that side of my family. My step-father really didn’t have a clue how to raise a child. He always had a way of not leaving marks on me. I kinda deserved it though as I was a little ■■■■ when I was younger. i am just glad I have my own place now as living with him wasn’t good for my MH.

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Dad left when I was 5, never said as much as hi afterwards, treated me as a complete stranger even when we met once on the street. Mom was abusive and neglectful and no one realised it or seemed to care. I was called ‘the girl on the nineth floor who always cries’ by the neighbours, but no one ever called social services on her to see why I was crying so much. (Being constantly beaten, raped and left alone was part if it, I am sure).

I used to talk to my dad in my head. I only stopped these imaginary conversations a few years ago. I am 33.

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Sadly people like that exist

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