A comprehensive service needs to include an assessment component and an intervention component; emergency, inpatient, and outpatient services; outreach to parents and children; linkages with schools, camps, and extended families; child-protection and legal services; and obstetric and pediatric facilities. Among the required resources, there needs to be case-management outreach teams; neuropsychological assessors; parenting capacity assessors; therapeutic group leaders; child, adult, and family therapists; and pharmacotherapists. Interventions should include symptom management, parenting classes, addiction treatments, family-planning education, therapeutic nurseries, support and information groups, occupational and vocational help, homemaking help, and respite opportunities. Income supplementation and safe housing are essential. Optimal care provision for the mother–child unit requires that adult and child mental health, child-protection, and legal service systems work cooperatively and preventatively to resolve opposing perspectives, and to keep families together whenever possible.

In Scandinavian countries, it is assumed that all parents, no matter how healthy or well off, require occasional help with parenting tasks. All Scandinavian parents are screened and assessed in order to ensure that children’s needs are optimally met (Reedtz et al., 2011). It is seen as natural in Scandinavia for parents to require assistance from time to time. This is not the case in other countries, where parents who cannot manage alone are viewed as deficient; asking for help from child services is frequently seen as shameful and stigmatizing. A change of attitude is needed. Individuals disabled by serious illness have as much human right as others to be parents, and it is incumbent on health services to treat such parents with respect, to affirm their choices, and to address their subjective, cognitive, behavioral, social, and socioeconomic needs in the context of their family and community.

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