How much do you share with or tell your dc regarding your mental health and medication?

[Tzibeleh]

?

My DCs know I have a mental health condition and what it is called. They also know they are absolutely not allowed to go anywhere near my meds.

Do you keep your meds with the rest of the family meds? I do, and I've just given my teen the code to the lock. He understand that he is only to touch certain meds, and only with my approval, but it made me realise that if he noses about in the cabinet he will discover things.

My dc know that I'm on HRT and why. But I have just started ADs after years of battling depression without medication.

I really don't know how to handle it.

I've told my two DSs that I have depression and that I take tablets for it. They're 9 and 11 and totally fine with it, we always talk about things very openly in our family. My meds are kept separate from everything else but only because I would forget them unless they lived in my morning coffee cup (on a high shelf away from other crockery!)

DD is 12 and have known about brain chemicals and that sometimes they go wrong and this causes emotional problems since she was 10. She knows I take medication for a mood disorder but I've steered clear of the terms bipolar or depression because of the stigma still attached. I will talk to her about the specific disorder when she's older.

Mine are six and ten and know why I take tablets and how they help. I'm very open with them about it because it's better than them wondering why I cry seemingly randomly.

My DD doesn't know a thing. She has SN and is quite immature for her age so I don't think it would be appropriate. I have some physical health issues as well, and she doesn't know about those either. I am pretty lax with meds tbh (kept in unlocked drawer) but I don't judge it as a high risk, she is not a curious person and just wouldn't be interested in them.

My 9yo knows that my brain went a bit wrong (psychosis then deep depression) x 2

He knows my medication is to keep me well. I don't make a big deal of it though he ddoes remember when I was ill and acting strangely.

DS2 is 4.5yo and doesn't really know much.

I will explain more as they get older, mostly because I want them to be in with a chance of recognising MH problems should they develop them themselves Sadly there seems to be a genetic component

I think most children would be able to have some understanding. By the time I was 13 I was on the same kind of medication myself so I had to understand.

I think some kind of sharing is preferable to what happened in my family. My mother is bipolar and it took me until I was actually studying it at uni to put two and two together. My father told me nothing and my mother told me he was ill, not her, and that she was in hospital to give him a break and get better. I have suffered from anxiety, depression and severe pmt and my dd, 9, knows that I have been to the doctors to help with it and that the medicine helps my brain chemicals be normal so I can stop being grumpy. I think it stops her worrying so much that I will go back to how I was Pre meds. Who knows what is best-it depends on the child too.