One of the biggest threats to a child's or young per­son's men­tal health is loss, of all types. The loss most com­mon­ly ex­pe­ri­enced by young peo­ple is the break-up of their fam­i­lies through par­ents' sep­a­ra­tion or di­vorce. No two re­la­tion­ships break up in quite the same way, but there are some con­sis­tent pat­terns which emerge. First of all, there's the am­i­ca­ble break-up. This is where both par­ties are able to ac­cept that the re­la­tion­ship is over. They then work on sep­a­rat­ing their lives and griev­ing the re­la­tion­ship rather than try­ing to take re­venge on each oth­er.

Am­i­ca­ble break-ups seem to be rare or maybe it's that no-one hears about them be­cause they take place with­out any pub­lic cri­sis or fuss. More com­mon is the some­what messy sep­a­ra­tion or di­vorce. Both part­ners tend to be an­gry, hurt, venge­ful – you name it. And they seek to take out these feel­ings on each oth­er. Giv­en that they have lived with each oth­er in an in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship, they know how to 'push each oth­er's but­tons' bet­ter than any­one else. It is nor­mal for this to hap­pen in the ear­ly stages of sep­a­ra­tion, when feel­ings are most in­tense. Most of the time, luck­i­ly, this in­ten­si­ty sub­sides and the par­ties are able to come to some res­o­lu­tion and move on with their lives.

Some­times, how­ev­er, the feel­ings don't sub­side and the par­ties car­ry on fight­ing, at times for years. Usu­al­ly, this is be­cause there have been so many hurts dur­ing the re­la­tion­ship that it's hard for one or both part­ners to walk away. And of course, be­ing nasty to each oth­er dur­ing the sep­a­ra­tion sim­ply pro­duces more hurt and more rea­sons for re­venge and so on in a vi­cious cy­cle. Af­ter a while, peo­ple feel that if they walk away, it means that they're 'giv­ing in' or 'los­ing' in some way. It's hard for them to ac­knowl­edge that, no mat­ter what, they have both al­ready lost be­cause the re­la­tion­ship has failed.

Worst of all, how­ev­er, is the sep­a­ra­tion or di­vorce that doesn't hap­pen when it should. Con­trary to what many be­lieve, mar­i­tal break-up is not the worst thing for chil­dren. The worst sit­u­a­tion is liv­ing with a parental re­la­tion­ship which has bro­ken down so bad­ly that it's ob­vi­ous to every­one liv­ing in the home. It's in­tol­er­a­ble to live with this kind of on­go­ing stress and con­flict.

Re­la­tion­ships can show break­down in many ways. Some­times one part­ner with­draws fi­nan­cial sup­port and the house­hold may suf­fer as a re­sult. Some­times one par­ent re­fus­es to par­tic­i­pate in house­hold life: won't eat at home, won't do any chores, won't as­sist with the chil­dren. Some­times par­ents en­gage in a silent 'cold war' where they don't com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er and the chil­dren end up be­com­ing 'mes­sen­gers'. Some­times there's all-out, open con­flict, ver­bal and/or phys­i­cal, with the chil­dren as wit­ness­es and ca­su­al­ties.

In these sit­u­a­tions, it's easy to pick a vil­lain and a vic­tim. But things are nev­er that sim­ple. Any­one who con­tin­ues to live with abuse has made a choice, even if she/he be­lieves that she/he is help­less. And if the par­ent feels help­less, then the chil­dren or young peo­ple in the home be­lieve it too and they al­so feel help­less. That can lead to des­per­ate ac­tion in or­der to re­lieve those feel­ings of pow­er­less­ness and the ter­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence of see­ing a par­ent con­tin­u­al­ly vic­timised by the oth­er par­ent.

It takes a lot of ef­fort, think­ing and work­ing on one­self, but a young per­son in such a sit­u­a­tion can learn to stop feel­ing help­less. Your par­ents' de­struc­tive re­la­tion­ship doesn't have to de­stroy you.

Next week: Sur­viv­ing the mad­ness