Bleuler, M. (1978). The schizophrenic disorders: Long-term patient family studies. Yale University Press. (See also Bleuler, M. [1972, 1974].)

OVERVIEW

In pointing out the effects of parental schizophrenia upon children, Bleuler is important for the stress he lays upon the resilience and overcoming found among children.

Bleuer observed 184 white offspring of schizophrenic parents in Zurich, Switzerland for a period of twenty years and was very impressed with their resiliency. He concluded that "only a minority of the children of schizophrenics are in any way abnormal or socially incompetent. The majority of them are healthy and socially competent, even though many of them have lived through miserable childhoods." (1978) Bleuler sensed that "the steeling effect of pain and suffering" encourages children to overcome their difficult childhoods "just to spite their inherent disadvantage." (1974)

It may be important to hear the surprise of the doctor as he ran across the children of schizophrenics carrying on so notably:

Many of these probands’ children I had to counsel professionally, principally because of the distress that the psychosis of their parents had caused them. I shared with these children their concern for the sick parents when things went bad for them—and their joy and pleasure when their parents improved.

I have also seen these probands’ children weep, I have met them on the stairs and in the halls of the clinic, bearing flowers and gifts as they went to visit their parents. And I saw them again repeatedly, sometimes years apart, or heard of them and their fate for years, while visiting other patients. From this different way of meeting them, I was bound to come up with a different evaluation of their personalities. Personality phenomena that appeared to me as the physician (and perhaps, sometimes, as a personal friend as well) of the probands’ children, much more as perfectly natural behavior patterns for a healthy individual undergoing difficult circumstances in connection with his family...

I saw how children worried about their parents, how they struggled against it when their parents were transferred to other clinics because, perhaps, visiting them would be more difficult then. I found out how many of these children of my patients made economic sacrifices or interrupted their professional training in order to help their parents, or how a son might undertake to manage the household to take the place of a hospitalized mother. A school-age girl cleverly evaded the truant officer in order to be able to care devotedly for her smaller siblings, necessarily neglected by the sick mother. And I saw frequently, too, how these children were confused in their relations to the opposite sex, because of the schizophrenia of their father or mother. Invariably they felt guilty toward a love partner; they worried whether, faced with the probability of becoming ill or of their future offspring becoming ill, marriage would be a responsible step to take...

The majority of (these children of schizophrenic parents) are healthy and socially competent, even though many of them have lived through miserable childhoods, and even though there are reasons to suspect adverse hereditary taints in many of them. Keeping an eye on the favorable development of the majority of these children is just as important as observing the sick minority. It is surprising to note that their spirit is not broken, even of children who have suffered severe adversities for many years. In studying the family histories, one is even left with the impression that pain and suffering has a steeling—a hardening—effect on the personalities of some children, making them capable of mastering their lives with all its obstacles, in defiance of all their disadvantages. (1978; quoted also in Werner, 1982)

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. What experience have you had with schizophrenia?
2. What must be the fears of children as they come to realize their mother or father has a disturbing emotional illness?
3. How might children react to a child whose parent(s) has (have) schizophrenia? What might be some reactions of teenagers?
4. How do adult people tend to react to mental illness? How would most teachers and others respond to a family going through such difficulties?
5. Why is hard for society, and most of us, to see the positive aspects of a family’s dealing with schizophrenia? What are these positives and how can they be reinforced?

IMPLICATIONS

1. It is understandable that the scientific literature has emphasized problems and negative effects for many years. Research’s new emphasis on resiliency as well as vulnerability is very heartening. We are now being shown how to reinforce tendencies leading to health and social success.
2. Social workers, teachers, and youth leaders need not only to recognize the signs of emotional illness in children and families, but to also understand techniques of prevention and reinforcement in recovery and resiliency.
3. Social reinforcement for struggling families will build the kind of communities we all desire for our children and the future.
4. Youth groups have a special part to play in healing and growth among the weakest and most vulnerable in society—as well as promoting growth among the resilient.
5. Studies of resiliency give all of us clues to better education and social service.

Dean Borgman cCYS