When one member of the family gets mentally ill, it strongly affects everyone in the family. Parent's illness is scary and worrying for the children, which is why it is really important to remember them as relatives.

The idea for the Bachelor's thesis came from the cooperative partner Fin-Fami - Kanta-Hämeen mielenterveysomaiset ry. They offered a chance for HAMK students to attend a course for parents and their children as a part of the thesis. The opportunity was seized by doing a practice based thesis.

The main purpose of this thesis was to support the execution of this parent-child course. The purpose of participation in the parent-child course is to improve family’s interaction skills and techniques and to help children to handle their feelings. Prevention of the negative feelings caused by the mood disorder is also one of the main goals in the course.

Evidence-based literature of nursing was used in the theory part of the thesis. Studies and scientific publications related to our subject were searched from the Internet. In the beginning of the theory part there is a short introduction of the cooperative partner, parent-child course and Vertti-operating model's principles. After these, there are the main features of depression and bipolar disorder, how those illnesses affect parenting and what kind of influence they have to children. Child's normal development and how effects of the illnesses reflect to that are also discussed.

The practice based part of the thesis was to attend parent-child course held in Hämeenlinna. The practice based part was produced for parents’ group and also for children's group. Afterwards a short summary of the course was made, where it was told how the practice based part went, why it was chosen, how in the authors’ opinion it helped the family to handle parent's illness, and also how the practice based part was linked to the whole course.