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Being raised in a home with a mental illness is extremely difficult and an adventure that I would not willingly give to any child. I say this not because I am narrow minded or because I am uneducated. I say this because it is something that I have lived through and something that I would not want any other child to have to go through.

Bipolar disease is an illness, physical in nature and usually controllable with drugs, it is characterized by extreme emotional highs and lows. Alcoholism and drug addiction are also illnesses and can be controlled by removing the substances which create the behaviors. It is also characterized by the person's extreme emotional highs and lows. We are asked now to be tolerant and to treat each of the people with these illnesses with respect and tolerance. Children are being raised in homes where one or both of the parents have these illnesses, a lot of these children are coming out fine, some are not. Whether the home has a parent with a mental illness, or a tendency for that parent to participate in substance abuse, I would choose not to have a child in that home.

The behavior of the parent, and that parents extremely high and low emotional states of mind, can be confusing, frightening and upsetting to a child who is busy trying to learn what behavior is expected from him/her in life. It causes the child anxiety when the parent is extremely depressed or angry, and gives the child the view that this behavior is normal, and therefore a behavior that is acceptable for them to later participate in, or to have the people in their lives participate in.

The child learns that physical/emotional abuse is acceptable behavior, whether it is in their own behavior, or in the behavior of other people they exist with. The child then is more apt to become physically or emotionally abusive in the future or to be physically or emotionally abused in the future. This is not an atmosphere that I would choose to have a child raised in and nor is it a future that I would purposely choose for any child.

I've been there, my siblings and I will probably always be forced to deal with the effects of our upbringing, and constantly have to fight the tendencies and "ideals" that we were given as children. It is not a future that I would purposely choose for any child.

I would not want to have my child raised in a home with a mental illness as I don't believe it is fair to pass that form of legacy on to my child. I would not choose to put my young child through the emotional confusion that comes along with the confusing emotional behaviors of their adult parent. We always try to give the best to our children and this would definitely not be the best possible upbringing or future that could be given to a child. I would want more for my child than I myself was given or using the words that a psychologist said to me years later as I was trying to figure it all out, "It is because you were raised in an abnormal environment that you have no ability to recognize normal behavior....".

I have to vote no on this issue.

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