It is a common belief that children of mothers with mental illness are mistreated more often than those of mothers

without mental conditions, but the limited amount of research in this area is not supportive of this conclusion. The number of child-bearing women with psychiatric disorders has grown dramatically in the past few decades, which is likely attributable to increasing deinstitutionalization. These women are more likely to have prenatal complications, as they are less likely to seek out prenatal care. After birth these mothers experience high levels of parenting stress, discipline problems, and poor parent-child bonding. Despite these problems, these mothers are still not shown to be more likely to abuse their children, but they less likely to seek assistance for fear of losing their children. One study concludes that women with serious mental illness were almost three times more likely than mothers without illness to experience custody loss. Severe mental illness does present difficulties in coping with parenthood. Mothers with severe mental illness have difficulties with the day-to-day parenting, and fully meeting their children's basic needs. But unfortunately, there is a current lack of services available for these women to assess and assist in parenting skills. A national survey revealed that only 16 of 50 public state psychiatric systems routinely collect data on whether psychiatric patients have young children. Therefore, there is an ever growing need for psychiatric centers and child welfare institutes to foster communication and provide assistance for these young children and their mothers because for many of the mothers, parenting is a social and occupational role they value. One particular study concludes that it is useful to determine a mother's awareness of her mental condition in order to evaluate her ability to be an effective parent. There was a strong correlation between the mother's consciousness of her illness and better adherence to medication and psychosocial functioning, and therefore better parenting ability. There is an obvious relationship between severe mental illness causing difficulties in parenting and the potential for child maltreatment. However, there is little to no research evidence to support this relationship, and it is important to note that child maltreatment is multifactorial, and that mental illness in the mom is only a risk factor for abuse or neglect. There is a need for programs to assist mother's with mental illness in developing parenting skills while coping with their illness, and better coordination between the mental health facilities and child welfare. With better identification of mentally ill mothers, better evaluation and support, and careful monitoring, the risk for child mistreatment can be drastically deduced without the need to remove these children from their moms.