If there were a “recipe” for creating a mental illness, placement in the foster care system would potentially contain all of the necessary ingredients. Any good cook knows, however, that just having the ingredients isn’t what makes a specific dish. How things are put together matters just as much. At Highland Hospital Behavioral Health, in Charleston, West Virginia, we give children, adolescents, and adults the tools to change the outcome of their mental health recipe.
Losing the Genetic Lottery
There’s nothing we can do about our genetics, unfortunately, and heredity can play a role in mental illness. Unfortunately, there are a lot of children in the foster care system because their parents struggle with addiction and/or mental illness, which increases the child’s likelihood of also developing mental illness and/or addiction.
As mentioned above, having the ingredients does not mean that a young person must follow the same recipe as their parents. With early mental health interventions and honest, helpful conversations about substance use and addiction, young people may be able to avoid the outcomes their parents experienced.
The Presence of Trauma
One of the other ingredients that is generally found when people experience behavioral health disorders is trauma. Trauma is anything a person goes through that is so horrifying, overwhelming, or painful that it exceeds their ability to cope. Because we all have different coping skills and different support systems, what is traumatic for one person may just be mildly upsetting for another. Because children haven’t developed the coping skills of adults and they don’t have the ability to protect themselves from bad things that happen to them, they are especially susceptible to trauma.
Children who enter the foster care system often carry the weight of traumatic experiences they faced before placement, such as:
- Physical, sexual, and/or verbal abuse
- Emotional and/or physical neglect
- Living with a caregiver who struggles with substance use or unmanaged mental health conditions
- Having a parent who is incarcerated
- Witnessing domestic violence
- Being separated from their parents or other close family members
The Trauma of Being in Care
Not only may a child endure trauma while living with their birth family, but the foster care system itself can inflict trauma. Some of the most common examples of this are:
- How a child enters the foster care system. In some cases, children observe their parents being arrested by law enforcement as part of their placement in the foster care system. In other cases, they may have to turn in their own parents for abuse, which results in their removal and causes the child to feel at fault for their own placement. Children often enter care with few possessions and may be forced to sleep at social services offices, hotels, and shelters until a placement can be arranged.
- Frequent moves between foster care placements. The longer a child lives in foster care, the more likely they are to experience multiple placements. They are often not able to stay in the same school or even the same community after relocating to a different foster home, so they lose contact with friends and trusted adults in most cases, and may be placed further away from their birth parents, making it harder to have frequent visits. While West Virginia has better numbers than many other states, nearly a quarter of children in the foster care system within the state experience more than two placements while in care.
- Separation from siblings. Our siblings are the longest relationships most of us will ever have. They may be our bitterest rivals, but they can also be our best friends. Children who have lived in unstable home environments may also be caretakers for their younger siblings. Being separated from one another can be painful and disorienting for children in foster care, who have leaned heavily on each other before placement.
- Abuse within foster care placements. Even though children are placed in foster care to keep them safe from abuse, children are sometimes placed with other children or foster parents who inflict abuse upon them.
Preventing Mental Illness in Foster Youth
Despite the fact that the things listed above can and do happen to foster children, not all young people placed in the foster care system develop mental health or substance use disorders. Some of the reasons that are commonly cited for this include:
- The presence of safe, supportive adults
- Access to mental health services
- Development of healthy coping skills
- A resilient mindset that allows people to bounce back from difficulties
At Highland Hospital Behavioral Health, our staff are trained in trauma-informed practices. Our evidence-based interventions and individualized care plans allow us to offer high-quality treatment to people who have survived trauma, giving them the tools to heal and move forward with their lives.
