The Negative Effects of a Caring Role on Children and Adolescents - Literature review Example

With the recognition that young carers are rising in number and their needs require more focused attention, several studies have been done to investigate their issues. Most of the studies done were qualitative in nature, using questionnaires and interviews to gather data on young carers’ deep insights and needs. Sahoo & Suar (2008) did a meta-analysis of qualitative and quantitative studies on young carers’ role in chronic illness, mental illness and drug and alcohol problems of the people they cared for.

The studies have revealed that children are forced into stepping into the caring role when their parents become ill, disabled or either parent dies. With chronic illness, the common observation in the studies is adverse effects of caring on the children’s behaviour, school performance, mental and physical well-being and financial hardship which children make an effort to ease by being forced to bring in money from working. The same observations were gathered from studies of young carers of parents/ relatives with mental illness and substance abuse problems.

However, in addition, mental illness of parents cause anxiety and stress and psychiatric disorder in children as well as impairment of parent-child communication resulting in depression and resiliency of the child carers. Moreover, studies on substance abuse reveal that parents do not exhibit good parenting competencies and instead, display a failure to effect discipline in the family and neglect of their children.