Sammanfattning
In Norway, the national policies for the last decades have emphasized community-based mental healthcare services. The establishment of crisis resolution and home treatment teams (CRHT) is a part of this policy. Many of the CRHT’s service users are parents with custody of children. The objective of this article is to explore the lived experiences of being a parent experiencing a mental health crisis and how the CRHT teams contribute in this situation. The study has a hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, with an explorative and descriptive design, based on individual interviews. The study reveals that being a parent in undergoing a mental health crisis can be thought of in terms of both both strength and challenge. The children help in keeping focus on life and the crucial daily tasks and issues. The parents are capable of keeping up with the everyday routines but struggle with the emotional demands of being a mother or a father. Furthermore, various aspects of being open about mental health problems are revealed as multifaceted. The informants of this study call for more attention to the parental role from the CRHT professionals.