Chronic Illnesses in Children and Their Effect on the Families

Specific data in regards to the individual’s social development and behaviour is collected. Inquiries about core ASD symptoms including, unusual, or repetitive behaviours and social relatedness are done, the family’s input is important.

In the theory of the family as a system, psychosomatic symptoms, including anorexia nervosa, are reinforced in an effort to avoid spousal conflict. Parents deny marital conflict by defining sick child as family problem. Unhealthy family environment: members strive at all cost to maintain appearance. Control. Passive father, domineering mother, overly dependent child, perfectionism- child feels that she must satisfy standards. he child eventually begins to feel helpless and ambivalent toward the parents. In adolescence, these distorted eating patterns may represent a rebellion against the parents, viewed by the child as a means of gaining and remaining in control. The symptoms are often triggered by a stressor that the adolescent perceives as a loss of control in some aspect of his or her life.

According to Stanhope and Lancaster (2008) “Each family is an unexplained mystery, unique in the ways it meets the needs of its members and society” (p. 550). Family nursing is a special field that involves the nurse and family working together to achieve progress for the family and its members in adjusting to transitions and responding to health and illness. The Friedman Family Assessment Model serves as a guide in family nursing to identify the developmental stage of the family, environmental data, family structure, composition, and functions as well as how the family manages stress and their coping mechanisms. From this data, three nursing diagnoses with interventions are developed.

A total of 35 children were enrolled into the current study; 15 children had a medical illness, 14 children were siblings of a child with a medical and/or chronic illness, and 6 children were healthy and had healthy family members. The children with medical illnesses and the

158-159). “In reviewing the literature, the focus was on identifying the impact of parental mental health, the associated risks, the difficulties with the interface working, and proposed solutions” (Duffy et al., 2010, p. 159). Some of concerns expressed for the program to be effective were how mental health and child care services work together, communication between the two, role clarity, and the outcome hoped to be achieved by the development of this program was to provide holistic interventions which could not be provided by just one agency, earlier intervention which was more effective, to decrease staff stress, and to obtain a better outcome for the families involved (Duffy et al.,

The health of a family is a vital part of how that family interacts with one another and how each individual of the family will function in society, later teaching their children about a healthy lifestyle or lack thereof. The family health assessment helps to identify risk factors and potential dysfunction (Edelman, 2014) I interviewed a single parent family home about their health and how they perceive it. This family is an all-male family, an athletic seventeen year old boy getting ready for his senior year, a twenty year old young man, and a hardworking, dedicated, overweight father.

Two of the most common clinical symptoms in childhood disorders is fever and pain . At times when parents present with their children and the different concerns that they have noticed, we as healthcare providers must take them serious and evaluate and investigate each individual circumstance.

Children may have high risks of mental illness because of low birth weight that could be related to prenatal exposure to substance abuse, poverty, poor parent-infant attachment, parental mental health disorder, exposure to traumatic events, and abuse and neglect (Selsnick, Zhang, Brakenhoff, 2017). Adolescents that are exposed to violence like bullying and social exclusion, as well as pressure to use illicit substances can lead to the emergence of several psychiatric disorders during these years (Selsnick, Zhang, Brakenhoff, 2017). Some risk factors that can cause the development or emergence of a mental illness in an adult is death of a friend or family member, divorce, economic hardship, assault, and role conflict or overload (Selsnick, Zhang, Brakenhoff, 2017). Lastly, a group that is often forgot about is the elderly population. They often experience stressful events in a high volume. They are commonly experiencing the death of their friends, they may have to relocate their residence, and deal with loss of health and autonomy. Attention to each age group and their experiences is vital in reducing their overall disparities (Selsnick, Zhang, Brakenhoff,

The term family brings to mind a visual image of adults and children living together in a harmonious manner, although this may not be the case for all. The “typical” family, two biological parents and children, has changed over time. Families are as diverse as the individuals that compose them, and clients have deeply ingrained values about their families that deserve respect. The family is the primary social context in which health promotion and disease prevention takes place, as the family’s beliefs, values, and practices strongly influence the health behavior of its

The family has various functions that include teaching members’ values, morals and beliefs as they relate to health practices. Health can be defined as a complete state of wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease. Gordon’s functional health patterns are a methodology developed by Marjorie Gordon in 1987 to be used as a guide to establish a comprehensive nursing database (Kriegler & Harton, 1992). Gordon’s eleven functional health patterns are; health perception/ health

In the Structural Family Therapy model, therapy is not focused solely on the individual, but upon the person within the family system (Colapinto, 1982; Minuchin, 1974). The major idea behind viewing the family in this way is that “an individual’s symptoms are best understood when examined in the context of the family interactional patterns,” (Gladding, 1998, p. 210). In SFT, there are two basic assumptions: 1) families possess the skills to solve their own problems; and 2) family members usually are acting with good intentions, and as such, no

Curson,D. & Sharkey, S.(2006) ‘Out of the mouths of babes’: Drawing upon siblings’ experiences to develop a therapeutic board game for siblings and children with a chronic illness. Clinical Psychology Forum, 159, 36-38

The symptom is merely a front for the family’s larger stress. And we do not determine who the family consists of – the family does.

History of familial disorders and illnesses was also studied. Results show that participants that had family members that suffered from mental disorders, substance abuse, and so on were more likely to experience Major Depressive Disorder than those participants who were not subject to these illnesses. Daniel N. Klein and Catherine R. Glenn (2013) concluded that,

When a family decides to have a child, everything changes. That child becomes a number one priority. In order for a child to lead a healthy, functional life, a family needs to be strong and functional. When a family becomes dysfunctional, the most effected is the children. The children forget their children and act out which makes them difficult to live with. If a dysfunctional family, let alone the children, knew that therapy and help was available to them, more families would become healthy. In this paper, I will prove that children in dysfunctional families can self-diagnose and be encouraged to seek help and treatment so that their future can be affected by their own mistakes and not the mistakes of their families.