Coping strategies of family with a chronically ill child

Any childhood disease is stress for parents or other carers. The goal of this survey was to assess what coping strategies are used in families with a chronically ill child to cope with the resulting stress situations. The examined cohort consisted of parents of children suffering from a selected chronic disease (diabetes mellitus, bronchial asthma, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, atopic eczema, celiac disease, epilepsy, and thyroid gland disease), and attending specialized paediatric out-patient's departments in Ostrava hospitals. The total number of respondents was 162 parents (122 mothers and 40 fathers). Chronically ill children in the parents’ cohort included 80 boys and 82 girls. Data were collected by means of the quantitative cross-sectional survey method. The main research method was an F-COPES questionnaire (Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scales). Stress in the family related to the disease of a child, was felt by 95 (59%) respondents of the cohort. The perception of stress by parents differed significantly (p < 0.01) according to the kind of chronic disease (mostly the parents of children suffering from celiac disease, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes mellitus). It followed from the answers of respondents that they most frequently applied internal coping strategies to cope with problems – the redefinition of a stressful event as a more manageable one and the acceptance of stress by moderating reactivity, avoidance or passivity. In the use of coping strategies, no significant difference was found depending on the sex of parents, their age, the duration of the disease, the sex of the chronically ill child or the number of siblings. Unlike families with a single parent, complete families used their closer social surroundings significantly more (p = 0.046) for help in coping with stress, and thus they were distinguished by a more adaptive behaviour mechanism, similar to parents with a higher level of education.