Communication in the family of the asthmatic child

Abstract

The literature is reviewed in order to see what support, direct or indirect, was to be found for adopting a communication perspective in gaining insight into childhood asthma. A study is presented on the communication (pattern and efficiency) of parents having an asthmatic child in a standardized communication situation in which a communication conflict is induced. Parents of children with severe chronic heart disease were used as control couples. As expected, the parents having asthmatic children proved to be a heterogeneous group with respect to communication efficiency. Two-thirds of the couples showed a communication as efficient as that of the control couples, whereas one third demonstrated an extremely inefficient communication in that they failed totally to cope with the experimentally induced communication conflict.

Child discourse and parental control in pediatric consultations

“…Previous work on families with asthmatic children has shown that certain types of communicative malfunctioning is related to certain types of psychosomatic Symptoms (Minuchin, Rosman and Baker, 1978;Wikran, Faleide and Blakar, 1978). In the light of Minuchin and his collaborators' findings on interaction in families with psychosomatic problems (Minuchin, Rosman and Baker, 1978), we would, for instance, expect stronger parent-child coalitions, more conflict avoidance, and more protective parental concerns in at least some of the allergy child families (those with more distinct psychosomatic problems).…”

Egocentrism and Inefficiency in the Communication of Families Containing Schizophrenic Members

“…Since the demand characteristics of the experimental situation obviously may be different for the two groups, our findings may represent mere tautologies (cf. 16, 35, 72). 5 However, the results from a series of recently completed studies applying the same experimental method make this explanation very unlikely, or at least insufficient: For example, Haarstad (40) found that families containing a daughter given the diagnosis anorexia nervosa revealed a communication pattern different from both Group N and Group S. If the group differences found could be accounted for by different demand characteristics of the experimental situation, all the various “pathological” families and parental couples should have behaved more or less similarly; at least such systematic group differences should not have been expected.…”

“…5 5 The same criticism may be applied to the Solvberg and Blakar (71) study. However, a series of studies (39, 72, 64, 45) have revealed that other groups of parental couples (parents of borderline patients, asthmatic, children, and children with enuresis) show patterns of communication different from both the Group N and the group S couples. …”

Children at Risk of Allergic Development: The Parents’ Dyadic Relationship

“…In recent decades there been an increas ing tendency to conceive of psycho-and psy chosomatic pathology as influenced by the communication style within the family and the interaction between the family and im mediate environment [Wikran et al, 1980], This has been conceptualized in several ways. For this paper it is especially relevant to point to Minuchin's 'enmeshment' and Pinkerton and Weavers' [1970] notion of an ambivalent 'aura' in the family situation.…”