The Village Project - supporting children of parents with mental illness in Austria

Research Group Village of the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft in cooperation with the Medical University Innsbruck

Children of parents with a mental illness (COPMI) often need additional supports to lead the happy and healthy lives they desire. In some cases though, those supports are either not available or not found by families, resulting in negative long-term outcomes for these children. This four-year research project aims to increase identification and strengthen formal and informal supports around children when their parents have a mental illness. This project will be co-developed with stakeholders and will implement and evaluate two practice approaches, focused on the child and on principles of collaborative care. The project utilizes a realist framework (as well as implementation science principles, and the theory of symbolic interactionism) and mixed-methodologies, and involves numerous data collection methods including: literature reviews, questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, and observations to determine the impact and benefits of providing increased supports for COPMI in Austria.