The proposed research is designed (a) to examine factors associated with increased risk for emotional and behavioral maladjustment in children and parents in families under extreme stress and (b) to describe the nature of coping processes (including problem- and emotion-focused coping, causal attributions, and social support) in families under extreme stress which may protect children and parents from the development of emotional and behavioral disorders. For the purposes of this study families in which a parent has recently been diagnosed and is undergoing treatment for cancer have been selected as a prototypic group of families under conditions of extreme stress. The levels of stress, coping processes, and degree of maladjustment in these families and a sample of matched control families will be assessed at four points in time over one year. Assessments will be conducted at points in time coinciding with four events during the disease and its treatment--diagnosis, post surgery, during radiation or chemotherapy, and post-treatment. It is hypothesized that the presence of a catastrophic illness in a parent will increase the risk for emotional/behavioral maladjustment in children and their parents.
The aims of the study include the following: (1) To identify factors which may increase the risk of maladjustment in children of cancer patients, including sex and age of the child, the level of psychological symptoms displayed by the parents, and whether the mother or father has the disease. (2) To examine stress-symptom relations between family members in families under extreme stress as compared with families under normative stressful conditions. (3) To identify characteristics of effective coping in families under extreme stress, including the use of flexible as opposed to rigid patterns of coping and the match between the type of coping used and the degree of perceived control over the stressor. (4) To examine the degree of similarity between coping strategies used by parents and children in response to a major stressor confronting the family.
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