Children

Children living with a parent dealing with substance use and/or mental health problems often have important and unanswered questions:

• Why does my mom or dad act the way she or he does?
• Will mom or dad get better?
• Why is my family so different?
• Is it my fault?
• Will it happen to me?

CAMH’s storybooks for children are engaging, clinically grounded educational resources – the first of their kind to be published in Canada. They offer a starting point for a discussion about problems in the family, and offer answers to common questions kids have. The storylines and the illustrations reflect ethnocultural diversity, making these books highly accessible and relevant to a broad range of children.

Wishes and Worries
A story to help children understand a parent who drinks too much alcohol
Wishes and Worries tells the story of Maggie and her struggle to understand her father’s problem with alcohol. Maggie wishes that her ninth birthday party will be better than her eighth. What a mess that was! Her father had been drinking and totally embarrassed her in front of her friends. Over the year, Maggie begins to get answers to some of her questions as she talks to her teacher, her school counsellor and her parents about her father’s problem with alcohol and how it affects everyone in the family. She learns that she is not responsible for her father’s drinking, that it’s OK to reach out for help, and that there are people in her life that she can trust and talk to about her feelings. Read more...

Can I Catch It Like a Cold?
A story to help children understand a parent’s depression
Can I Catch It Like a Cold? tells the story of Alex and his struggle to understand his father’s problem with depression. In this book, Alex can’t understand why his father sits at home alone crying, instead of coming out to watch him play his soccer game. Alex soon discovers that his father has depression. Alex learns what causes depression, what treatments are available and how he can cope and live well while his father is ill. He also learns that it’s not his fault that his father has depression – and no, depression is not something you can catch, like a cold. Read more...

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