OBJECTIVES: To examine young people's and parents' accounts of communication about cancer in childhood. DESIGN: Semistructured interviews analysed using the constant comparative method. SETTING: Paediatric oncology unit. PARTICIPANTS: 13 families,…
This article identifies and lists the problems of children with complex medical conditions and/or complex home health case needs. Five categories of seriously chronically ill children are identified and programs to meet their needs discussed. The…
This descriptive study used qualitative methods to look at two aspects of the search for meaning in parental bereavement--the search for cognitive mastery and the search for renewed purpose. One hundred and seventy-six bereaved parents answered…
A retrospective, qualitative, preliminary study examined if parental involvement in a life-support withdrawal (LSW) decision impacts the perceptions and adjustment of parents whose child died in a pediatric critical care unit. Participants were…
Surveyed 32 people (average age 63 yrs) whose homes were damaged or destroyed by a fire immediately after the fire and 1 yr later, to examine the prediction that finding positive meaning in that traumatic event would be associated with better coping…
This work evaluated the experiences of 45 parents of children with cancer and 101 cancer patients with their home pastors and hospital chaplains. The satisfactions and difficulties encountered in these interactions are detailed, and recommendations…
BACKGROUND: This paper examines the degree to which symptoms of anxiety and depression at age 14 years are associated with early childhood experience of maternal anxiety and depression, poverty, and mother's marital relationship distress and…
While chronic illness has a profound impact upon the individual, an immense burden is imposed upon the family. When the competing demands of an illness and the family escalate exponentially, there may be a crisis. Traditionally, crisis theory has…
Foster parents in the child welfare system occupy a unique position in our culture. While expected to parent and provide safe, loving, and normative family experiences to a child removed from her/his family of origin, they are, simultaneously,…
BACKGROUND: Promoting resilience is an aspect of psychosocial care that affects patient and whole-family well-being. There is little consensus about how to define or promote resilience during and after pediatric cancer. OBJECTIVES: The aims of this…
OBJECTIVE: To identify and illustrate common explicit heuristics (decision-making aids or shortcuts expressed verbally as terse rules of thumb, aphorisms, maxims, or mantras and intended to convey a compelling truth or guiding principle) used by…
Social consequences of raising children who were medically fragile and developmentally delayed (MF/DD) were explored in an ethnographic study of 20 families with school-age children. The overarching theme was the families' search for safety and…
In most industrialized countries today, the death of a child is a rare phenomenon. When it occurs, however, it is usually within a hospital setting, after the child has received complex and often long-term medical care aimed at curing or controlling…
It is well known that a sick child has a profound impact upon the family involved. What remains less clear is how that stress affects the partnership of the parents - their intimacy, health and wellbeing and who is responsible for supporting the…
Although new technologies such as array genomic hybridization to diagnosis the cause of intellectual disabilities (ID) are exciting to clinicians, the value of an etiological diagnosis to the families of affected children is largely unknown. Parents…
Psychological and behavioral adaptation to HIV is integral to long-term survival. Although most research on coping with HIV has focused on factors associated with poor adaptation, recent research has expanded to include positive concomitants of…
The impact of the deaths of 19 children from malignancy on subsequent patterns of maternal and paternal coping styles was evaluated in a retrospective study of Dutch parents. The parents had been bereaved on average for 19 months. Parental coping was…
This follow-up study examined how bereaved couples' grief reactions change over time and how the quality of the marriage can predict these reactions for men and women. A group of 31 bereaved couples who 2 to 4 years earlier had lost an infant (…
Crisis theory, stress and coping theory, and research on parental stress and coping during pediatric critical care experiences are integrated into a conceptual framework for understanding, assessing, and ultimately intervening to reduce parental…
This study examined stress factors in families with a school-aged child with a disability. Path analyses revealed that children's demandingness and neediness for care was related more to maternal stress and that child's acceptability was related more…
BACKGROUND: One in four cases of childhood cancer is incurable. In these cases death can usually be anticipated and therefore preceded by a phase of palliative care. For parents, preparing to let their child die is an extraordinarily painful process.…
Methodological problems make it difficult to determine whether or not the rate of separation or divorce among families caring for a child with a chronic life-threatening illness such as leukemia, spina bifida, or cystic fibrosis is higher than…
Caring for a child with cancer is a demanding experience for both parents, yet most research focuses on mothers. In this paper, we present the findings of a secondary analysis of data from a study in which the care-giving experience of fathers is…
In the current study, we investigated the psychometric properties of a Dutch translation of the posttraumatic growth inventory in a heterogeneous group of cancer patients. Its original five-factor structure was maintained. The internal consistency of…
The purpose of this article is to provide data on a recently developed instrument to measure the multidimensional nature of the bereavement process. In contrast to widely used grief instruments that have been developed using rational methods of…
The present paper describes a cross-sectional study of the psychosocial adjustment of 143 children with severe disability and their families identified from a regional case register for children with special needs. Thirty-eight per cent of the…
CONTEXT: Communication is widely acknowledged as a crucial component of high-quality pediatric medical care, which is provided in situations in which parents typically experience strong emotions. OBJECTIVES: To explore emotion using the Linguistic…
A diagnosis of childhood cancer is an unexpected life event that often precipitates a situational crisis for all family members. Required cancer treatments and other ongoing stressors for both child and family will significantly disrupt the family's…
The authors conducted a meta-analysis to examine the relations of benefit finding to psychological and physical health as well as to a specific set of demographic, stressor, personality, and coping correlates. Results from 87 cross-sectional studies…
Bereaved individuals often experience profound social pressure to conform to societal norms that constrict the experience of grief rather than support it. This article explores grief in Western society1 through an analysis of the underlying…
Research conducted using the Haley Transcultural Strengths Assessment Interview Guide used in several studies has identified 11 sources of strength routinely utilized by parents caring for their child with intensive needs and child in…
The importance of measuring growth outcomes following a traumatic event has been highlighted in recent literature (e.g., Linley, Joseph: Journal of Traumatic Stress 17:11-21, 2004). Although reports of growth are abundant, the relationship between…
This study examines parental perceptions of the importance of grandparents as providers of routine care to children with disabilities and the impact of such assistance on parental well-being. Data are drawn from a survey and follow-up interactive…
To contribute to a better understanding of the utility of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90R; L. Derogatis, 1983) with bereaved samples, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on SCL-90R responses of 97 parents 2 years after the death of…
Monte Carlo methods were used to systematically study the effects of sampling error and model characteristics upon parameter estimates and their associated standard errors in maximum likelihood confirmatory factor analysis. Sample sizes were varied…
Cluster analysis was performed on a diverse group of 69 non-clinical grievers whose loved ones died between 12-40 months prior to the study. Based on psychometric measures of both bereavement distress and growth, three distinct clusters emerged: High…
