There has been a growing international discourse regarding the experiences and needs ofchildren living with a parent with mental illness. However, there remains a paucity ofresearch and dialogue surrounding the experiences of adult children who have lived withchildhood parental mental illness.

The limited available research which considered adultchildren highlighted increased risks of anxiety, depression, suicide, and limitedpsychosocial functioning. Furthermore there is a limited discourse surrounding the adultchild's own parenting role.

Qualitative research which invites adult children to constructtheir parenting narratives, (being parented and their own current parenting role) isunique. MethodologyA social constructionist philosophy was adopted to underpin the study.

A PartnershipFramework for a Reflexive Narrative for Researcher and Participant was generatedspecially for this study. Participants were invited to meet with the researcher if they hadexperienced childhood parenting by a parent with a diagnosed mental illness and if theythemselves, had not been diagnosed or treated for mental illness.

During a metaphoricalresearch space, the researcher met with individual participants to work in partnership toconstruct their narrative of being parented, alongside their own parenting role. A multistagedthematic analysis process was used thereafter.

In addition, a chronologicalmapping of participant's experiences highlighted important themes from childhood, theteenager period, adulthood, and subsequent adult children's parenting journeys. .