Families coping with the diagnosis of a serious chronic illness in a child are confronted with many challenges. In trying to understand the experiences of and outcomes for children with chronic illnesses, research thus far has examined the association between parental stress and coping and child adherence to medical regimens. Recent work has addressed how parents accept the diagnosis itself and how poor acceptance is related to outcomes for children. With a sample of 50 children diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and their parents, this project seeks to unite these courses of study and to investigate how parental acceptance of the diagnosis is related to the child's adherence to medical regimen over a six month period.
The specific aims of this study are 1) To examine the relations between parental stress, coping, and acceptance of their child's diagnosis at two different time points; 2) To identify relations between child quality of life and parental acceptance of illness; and 3) To identify links between parental stress, coping, and acceptance of illness and the child's adherence to medical regimen as measured by both parental report and objective biomedical indicators at each time period and over time.
