[Work with psychiatrically ill parents in a pediatric psychiatry treatment facility].

Since the new law for hospitalization has come into effect (1991) in Austria more than before children from parents who have psychoses or other serious mental disorders have to be taken into in-patient wards in psychiatric institutions for children-often according to a court decision. This article discusses the cases of 21 such children and their 16 (respective) families. The various difficulties in dealing with the mentally ill mothers and fathers as well as some first experiences with possible strategies for working with these parents, which were gathered in therapeutic practice, are described individually. Work with these parents means trying to establish reality or risking losing reality.