Should People with Mental Illness Have Children?

I am 17 and have autism and I am in collage. all of the males on my dads side of the famly have ADD, ADHD, or narcolepsy (the symptoms can be simaler and most are undiagnosed) and most if not all of us are incredibly smart (none of us were below average intelligence, most above until the PTSD hit my dad, who lost 25 IQ points in a year and is was still smart, and one of my uncles who wakes up ever morning with no memory, and one of my unkles has the first round in his gun is a blank for safty reasons). after reading many of these posts I have come to the conclusion that it dosent matter wether or not you have a mental disease when it comes to raising kids, the most important things are wether or not you and your spouce are capable of taking care of yourselves and have a support network that will help you when you need it to, as well as you and your spouce balancing each other out (you and your spouce should know your own and eachother weaknesses and you streainths should ballence them out)

I have been "different" all my life, one of six kids, and the second born in two consecutive sets of fraternal boy/girl twins, bracketed by two girls. My mother was a terrible alcoholic, histrionic and borderline, but also a brilliant former actress who once worked with many famous people. She gave up acting on a whim, came home to her father's college and met my dad. I believe my dad is Asperger/OCD, but was also the only reliable parent emotionally as we grew up. I believe we kids were all assigned roles to hide the elephant in the room, my high-functioning but very angry and drunk mother who hated watching her old friends thrive on TV and the silver screen. I became the mentally ill kid, and she abused me both mentally and physically. I won't speak for my siblings except to say we all had our own roles, but eventally all married, one is a doctor, one a nurse, one a writer, one a Navy helicopter technucuan, one an executive. I hace a niece at SpaceX. All the heritage of a crazy mom! I'm a former editor now on disability for bipolar. I have had a rocky life with an alcoholic ex-gay-husband and virtually no friends because I am bipolar. BUT my second husband is patient, stable, reliable, loving, and a remarkable father to our outstanding 20-year-old daughter, She is happy, healthy, has many friends, goes to a major university and is in a very difficult major. Yes, she gets stressed and hasn't really dated much yet, but what matters is that she says she would want no other person but me for her mother, despite the times depression or hospitalizations have kept me fom her. She loves me and is grateful for her dad, the "rock," but feels she would not have her creativity and sense of humor if it weren't for ne. We spent a long time deciding to have a child, and almost didn't, when my husband discovered two of my three stepson were doing drugs (one later died, and my husband has always been so grateful for his only daughter). I have never intentionally harmed my baby or abused. I have never known a love so deep. I think some severely psychotic people might not want to have kids, but I am not psychotic and am stable at lead 85 percent of the time,

Just an FYI people with borderline don't lash out at least I don't. look up a disorder before you post about it. we have internal problems the borderline would not be the problem in that instance just to clear that up. our struggle is internal not directed at others thanks.

Life is a gift. My dad is mildly Asperger/OCD/autistic, look, I enjoy living, I don't want to die, but there's a lot of people on the planet. Mentally ill people should not have kids. I won't. I can't have a kid in good concious, they would deserve better. Just about the only upside to my family is intelligence, which most of the time means jack in our society. Adopt a kid, don't subject your child to mental illness.

I dated a guy in college who was definitely mentally ill. He was very scary and dangerous. To top things off he wanted to be a cop that would be carrying a gun around. He had become violent with me on more than one occasion. He was even stalking me when we were dating and I didn't know it at the time. I used to think to myself that I hoped he never reproduced. How scary the thought that he would have a kid dangerous like himself. Luckily I heard he never become a cop. Hopefully he didn't reproduce either.

Just to clarify. People with BPD often DO lash out. It's part of the cycle commonly referred to as "I hate you, don't leave me". I have been battling BPD since my teens, I am now 46 and I have many friends with BPD and I have done extensive research on the topic.

Should people with mental health have children how can harm children please let me know please i am concen about this

No they should not be allowed to have children. And I mean they should be sterilized. Have all the sex you want but not children. My mom was schizo. She got pregnant 5 times by different men. After she had each of us we were taken from her and placed in foster care. She appeared in and out of our lives. It was hell. Not to mention I was fearful of growing up like her. Such good childhood memories.

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No! Mentally ill people should not be having children. You´re just trying to justify your own selfish decision, your son had no say in it. As someone who suffers from mental illness with wonderful family and friends I can say that life is very fearful an painful sometimes. Life is hard as it is, when you add mental illness into the equation it becomes a nightmare. Your poor son will have to live that because you weren't thinking of him, you were thinking of you.

i think yes & no,& it should depend on what type of mental illness it is,what it does to people who have it,& if the mental illness is or can be kept under control with either meds or if the person is able to keep it under control,& it the couple who has the mental illness weather its the mother or father or both,i think the county & state should do a backround check on both of them to see if there is anything posted online in the states computer system to see if they have anything thats posted on there from either law enforcement or by anybody that works in the court building such as a judge,that woould show any signs of any type of crime,or any type of abuse,or neglect of any kind that has to do with children,& if they find something,they need to prove if mental illness was the cause of it,if so,then take the children away depending on the crime & which parent did it,those parents should not be allowed to have children,or in my case,because i & my ex have no history of anything crimes,abuse or neglect against children,& they thought even though we took classes,bought a car,& worked with a fake baby,& made us give up our cat because of his marking due to my rep payee not giving me the money to get him fixed on time,& they still didnt think i was good enough for them,& there was no family member or friend here watching us like a hawk when their not here,they tried forcing & bribing us against our will,we wound up placing my first & maybe my only child i ever had in my life,& im in my 40s,& my ex is in her 20s,we allowed a family that my mom knows adopt my daughter,because the family believes that the parents she be in their childs life,she is already walking,getting big,very healthy,happy & is starting to talk,& she will be 3 in september,but all i care about is my daughter still being in my life,so this is how i think it should be

Hello, I realize this post is old, but maybe someone will see this and it will be helpful to them in some way. I am a functioning Borderline (Borderline Personality Disorder). I have been managing the disorder well for the past 6 years, however, I am not naive in thinking it has just 'gone away', some of my symptoms do still linger and take hold of my life choices occasionally. I have made the decision to not have children biologically because of my disorder, as it is almost inevitable my child would genetically inherit this illness as well. My mother had it, my aunt has it, my younger sister shows signs, and of course me. Thinking back to my teenage years, I just could find myself to be a responsible parent to knowingly pass on this illness to my child. This of course, is my own opinion from my own experiences with the disorder. I have instead decided that foster-to-adoption would be my best alternative. It has been hard to accept that I will not have my own children biologically, as I wanted for so many years, but that does not mean I cannot have a family. Some individuals with mental illness can be very functional, and would make incredible parents. But one must consider the possibility of passing down particular genes to their offspring. This is my case, and this is why I've considered alternative options for starting a family one day. It does make me sad sometimes, but again, I'd never want to be responsible for the pain that my child may go through, I only want to be there to help alleviate it.

Ii am about to turn 54, and i am very thankful i dont have children, although i deeply regret this decision because i love them. i have been mentally ill my whole life, and would have definitely emotionally and psychologically abused them, as i was in my childhood. i have just accepted my diagnoses of borderline Personality disorder and Complex Post traumatic Stress disorder, which are rooted there. My deceased father was severely Borderline, as was his own father, sister who helped rear him and at least 2 uncles. My mother had been married to him for 17 years already when she conceived me, and had already endured his absuive behaviors for many year and was very depressed and emotionally detached already. i was believed to be a stomach tumor until i moved. i learned many bad coping skills from their modeling and in order to cope with my childhood. Dissociation, substance abuse, multiple eating disorders, displacement, blaming, social isolation, acting out, acting in, passivity, passive-aggressivenes, workaholism, and how to repress my emotionally charged memories and the feelings attached to them in my body. This has caused me bones breakdown, anxiety and panic attacks, migraine headaches, GI disorders, GU problems, frequent flashbacks (of which the sexual abuse is the worst). Like my father, i was very superficial and had undeveloped empathy. My father claimed no responsibility for the horrendous consequences of his behaviors on his wife and developing children, and the mental and phesical disorders he caused us. My Mom is 89 now, and sufferes from Alzheimers and numerous stress-related diseases consecuatively with PTSD flashbacks mixed in. But I am finally getting better after actively embracing Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Prazocin, and PTSD therapy, and my life is turning around.
To put it bluntly, I would have severlely abused my hypothetical children because of my Borderline behaviors, emotional detachment which inhibits true nurturing and having them emotionally trigger repressed memories that happened to me as they grew up and hit triggering developing ages. I was not truly parented, and have not learned what i was deprived of experiencing. There are so many memories I kept repressed that are yet unhealed. And my kids would have grown up to hate me as badly as I did my father, until last year when i discovered the root causes of his dysfunction. I am capable of truly loving and nurturing others, but not when I had my emotional spicket turned off to protect myself from feeling more hurt. If I can't feel me, I could not read their feelings either. They too would be plagued and scarred by PTSD, and probably inherit BPD genetically. There are too many people in 3 generations of Dad's family who had all the symptoms, and several direct and indirect suidicides, as well as one homicide from a Borderline aggressive rage that traumatically orphaned 5 cousins. No child deserves PTSD or the inheritance i would have left them with, just as i didn't.
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Very extremely dangerous. They should never be allowed.

Absolutely not. As someone who is the PRODUCT of child abuse
Bpd. *C*-PTSD, ultra cycling bipolar, EDNOS, DID , nightmare disorder, crippling panic attacks, CONSTANT dissociation flashbacks. brand new ones at that. Ones I've never had up until 2 years ago. So, no. We should absolutely NOT have kids. I am a birthmother. I see my daughter once every 4 months the slicing pain that drills into my bone marrow...that guttural grief....that second guessing, the utter hopelessness , the near-misses. none of that compares to the fathomless endless guilt I'd feel if I ever hurt her. And THAT should be the standard. I'm sparing my daughter a lifetime of suffering by smashing my heart into smithereens .

NO. I have BPD and anxiety disorder and you people are absolutely SELFISH. We are BROKEN. As the saying goes, survival of the fittest. In the animal kingdom, we would be killed or eaten by our own mothers. In reality, we are just going through the motions. Our genes are messed up. Why on earth do you want to keep spreading the weak genes that are defective? I would NEVER wish this upon anyone. Its a daily struggle. Some months I am fine, but mostly I have not had a chance to really truly LIVE. I do not care if you feel you are "cured" because you pop 10 pills a day and you are a zombie or because it is under "control" now or that it's not proven to be genetic (which it is very much genetic plus outside factors). It is very disturbing especially for those of us who's moods change in a blink of an eye. I finally realized my outbursts as a teenager were related to BPD. To the poster who stated BPD does not cause outbursts, ummm you are so wrong. It is not only an internal fight you are dragging everyone else down. I was told to check out the book Stop Walking on EggShells which I do not even have to know what it's about. How about humanity stop being so selfish for once and start actually I don't know making a difference in the lives of others or the planet. I have NEVER wanted kids even if I had no mental illness, but there are plenty of kids in foster homes who need homes. I plan to foster teenagers in a couple of years. BUT to want to reproduce my faulty genes are you insane? Just like people who have addictions, uneducated, poor, etc should not have kids. We basket cases should definitely spare the world of more issues to bring. Not only that do you give a crap about how the kid is going to suffer? IDC if theres a 50/50 chance why are you risking it. This is absolute hell having to go through this. I am now 34 and I would have rather not been born even though I have a good life. I have always been successful in my life other than relationships and I am very attractive. But in the end, what does that matter when I cannot cope and function fully? I am living a half life. STOP PLEASE.

I have Bipolar Disorder with Psychosis and Anxiety Disorder, I have wanted to have children but fear they will get my genes. Mental Illness runs through my mother's line, not so sure about the father's because my mother is a rape victim. The man I am seeing has a mental illness but it doesn't run all through his line. Another factor is the fact cancer runs in my family as well, specifically ovarian cancer. Three generations on my mother's side, including my mother have had ovarian cancer and survived. I was diagnosed at age 4, been hospitalized 13x, and have tried to kill myself twice in my youth. I have a very loving and supportive mother who is very knowledgeable about mental health and I myself am very knowledgeable about it as well. The one thing my mother warned was not to have a child naturally, aside from the reasons above because my mother said babies with mental illness scream and cry all night long with no end. My mother developed a sleeping disorder because of a lack of sleep. She said the longest I slept for was 2 hours. Honestly, I would like to adopt a toddler but I am going to wait until my mental breaks associated with psychosis stop happening every single year.

My mom had OCD and decided to have me. Even-though I was successful in my career, I have ROCD which makes it nearly impossible to be successful in relationships. In my opinion, the mentally ill should not have children, inferior genes make life hell on earth.

I am a 40 year old mother of 1 decided against having children years ago I think it's the right decision I made for myself I decided on that decision because I didn't want the burden on me having to worry about my kids and the burden on th having to worry about me it's not fair on me or them

Those of you who are mentally ill in the comments saying we should not have children under any circumstances do not understand how fragile the human mind is in general. As someone with debilitating mental illnesses, I don't believe for a second that having them means someone shouldn't be allowed to have children. Why? Because it's not as simple as it looks. Mental illness isn't always a genetic factor, in the majority of cases, it's about how we were raised and what we weren't given as children that we desperately needed.
Our brains compensated for these needs by finding a way for us to survive, even if it harmed us or others. It is only by unraveling these things and addressing what it was that left us so traumatized that we can begin to feel empathy for ourselves and others like us. You must understand that, while it's very kind of you to consider that maybe you won't be the best parent (I know I wouldn't!), it would be beyond cruel to tell others they couldn't have children.
There will always be bad parents out there, but we can stop that ball when we see it and do better. We have the power to do that, whether mentally ill or not. Mental illness is a wide and deep spectrum that is impossible and wrong to judge with one swift hand saying all diagnosed will never be allowed to breed. You cannot "breed out" mental illness, and it's sickening to see that some people believe such a heinous lie. You cannot "breed out" trauma, a lack of nurturing and toxic shame. These things can and will occur no matter what anyone does to our genetic pool, purity is an absolute myth.
Brains are incredible, and we only understand the physical parts of them. Remember that. Mental Illness can be identified, catalogued and treated with the best option available but that does not mean we grasp fully. The rest of it is impossible to quantify, emotions, thoughts, personalities, memories, impossible to judge as unfit for human procreation, because you are telling someone that they are less than you, sub-human, for something out of their control.
What we need to do as a species is turn our judgement inwards and start tearing away the shame, guilt, embarrassment and harm others have done to us. It's time to start forgiving ourselves, learning from our mistakes and lending trust and compassion to others. The world doesn't need to be curated on a genetic level, it needs to be compassionate on a social level.

Mental illness comes from parents... sometimes yes, it is genetic but in my case it was environmental. My mother would flip out over nothing and so would my war veteran father. They flipped out on the two sisters I had with that were older than me so I had 4 people in the house that were constantly fighting over the smallest problems. Today, I told my mother that I needed some encouragement and love because I was going through a hard time. I explained it was a money issue and that the economy is doing really bad and I cant find a job. She flipped out. Asking for love and encouragement and then flipped out. Yes, I am an adult and shouldn't be looking for mom and dads encouragement... but it wasn't there to begin with even when I was younger or it would be scattered and inconsistent. Then, it would often be the complete opposite of encouragement-Degradation. My father would talk about him wanting to commit suicide a lot, he would say things like "I want you to suffer like I did" and then a few minutes later turn into a different person around other people. He was a jekyl and hyde which was really unhealthy. So, 20 years of this could probably lead a completely sane person down the road to self hatred. There are no door knobs on the rooms in the house. THey had been broken down by the people in the house. There was no privacy at all. No respect. Nothing. I think that certain people need to realize what damage could be done to people that are raised by people who are not educated enough to have children. There should be some type of parenting class of education from people who actually know what they are doing. My father also used to compare me to others saying that other were "bred" for success and used to get on my case about my mother being from a different background... It was just ugly. My grandmothers used to blame my mother-My Sister used to blame my grandmother. It was a really bad upbrining and this caused me to become a numb person that appears feeble. This attracted bullies. People naturally pick on people that are quiet. It was an ugly life and there is no simple attitude trick or adjustment for this. It was a bad experience.

Whose to determine the rules or who abides by them, by that reasoning even the most wealthy and royalty with severe mental illness embedded in their DNA should not be allowed to propagate yet you have Howard Hughes and the Dupont family who did, as for those with titles the list of those who were afflicted with mental illness is immense due to inbreeding.
Where will the line be drawn, I am 61 with no heirs would really like to have children that is if I am not sterile, am afflicted with major Attention Deficit Disorder and a slight case of OCD both of which I can manage without toxic pharmaceuticals and you are a fool if you believe all of them are not.
I believe I would make a fairly good father making certain my children received proper medical treatment through Homeopathic remedies treated by a Homeopathist.
They would be properly attired and their diets determined by decent dieticians and nutritionists.

Honestly f all of you for the post. I have a child and have suffered with mental illness all of my life but I love my son so so so much and am gentle and kind with him. I am a great mother. Absolutely SHAME on you for this post.