The family of a child with cancer - changes within the family system

• Authors: Sieminska Maria , Greszta Elzbieta
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This study aimed to describe the functioning of families of children with cancer. A semistructured questionnaire was used to interview 116 parents from 58 such families. Changes occurring within the family system from the parents' perspective have been determined and recorded. Most of the changes turned out to be directed at internal relationships within families. Families with much self-orientation have been shown to be prone to transforming into hermetic systems. Polish version of FACES-III was applied to map families as balanced (20%), mid-range (52%) or unbalanced (28%). Results of the study underline the importance of illness duration for functioning of the family. Cancer persisted for the shortest time in balanced families (4.3 years), slightly longer in mid-range (4.5) and the longest in unbalanced families (6.9). The difference between balanced and unbalanced families was significant (u=1.9615, p<0.05).

Keywords

EN

CHILDHOOD CANCER; FAMILY FUNCTIONING; FAMILY SYSTEM; OLSON'S CIRCUMPLEX MODEL

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Committee for Psychological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Polish Psychological Bulletin
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 39
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 192-201
• Physical description: source-id: PPB_39_4\D25J0838G03995J0.xml
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Sieminska Maria

author

Greszta Elzbieta

• Maria Sieminska, Pomorska Akademia Medyczna w Szczecinie, ul. Rybacka 1, 70-204 Szczecin, Poland

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Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

09PLAAAA071019

DOI

10.2478/v10059-008-0023-6