Does mental wellness affect child custody?

The healthy thing to do is to protect your children, not to stigmatize yourself or your children. Legitimate mental illness affects child custody, and well it should. However, many parents play a finger-pointing game of “You’re less stable than I am,” which doesn’t serve the kids. Get an evaluation if you’re disputing fitness, but agree in advance on who will do it and what will happen with the results so that it can still be used even if one or both of you disagree with the evaluator’s findings.