Systemic Research on Chronicity Factors in Infantile Asthma

Abstract

This work is the result of research into chronicity factors in infantile asthma. The research had two main goals. The first, using a sample of 100 asthmatic children, was to reconstruct the therapeutic history of the individual patients on the hypothesis that the therapeutic intervention they had undergone in fact conditioned the quality of the cure demand. The second was to evaluate the influence of family dynamics on the chronic development of infantile asthma. A comparison was made between two interactive models using a sample of 10 families with asthmatic children with chronic tendencies and a sample of 10 normal families. The results show that typical dysfunctional interactive patterns exist in the experimental sample and that they are correlated with the perpetuation of the asthmatic symptom. The paper concludes that every therapeutic intervention that is limited to dealing with the biological component of the asthmatic symptom and ignores the influence of family dynamics becomes itself a major chronicity factor. Thus a "systemic" intervention is considered necessary to prevent chronicity.

Concensus Rorschach interaction patterns of families with an asthmatic child

“…The findings of this study, using non-psychiatric families, parallels those of Wikran et al on unselected families with psychosomatic children, these investigators found the supposed attributes of 'the psychosomatic family' to match some families but not all. Only Onnis et al (1986) have been able to show the existence of typical dysfunctional interactive patterns in a sample of families of chronic asthmatic children.…”

De waarde van het ‘psychosomatisch gezinsmodel’ bij gezinnen waarin een kind aan astma lijdt

“…Onnis et al (1986) onderzochten dezelfde subgroep als Minuchin et al (1975) , namelijk een groep van tien kinderen met een ernstig astma, die na drie jaar medische behandeling weinig of geen verbetering vertoonden. Vergeleken met een groep normale gezinnen vertoonden de gezinnen met astmatische kinderen bij het uitvoeren van drie gezinstaken significant vaker de door Minuchin beschreven kenmerken.…”

The Merits of a Systemic Vision and the Usefulness of the Genogram in Psychosomatics: Application to Psychodermatology

“…However, the results of our research enable us to revise this last concept in a more systemic direction [10]. Our research on the structure and dynamics of families of psychosomatic patients [7,9,11] has clearly revealed that one of the most typical characteristics of the dysfunctioning in these families is the tendency to avoid expressing conflicts and emotional tensions. We can then understand and verify how the difficulty in 'verbalizing emotional experiences' is not the consequence of the 'lack' of a fantasizing and emotional life, but results rather from the fact that emotions are carefully filtered so as to avoid tensions and conflict, to conserve a 'pseudo-harmony' in the family system.…”

“…So, in the 'somatogenic' theories, each psycho-emotional factor is reduced to a purely neurophysiological reaction of a biological organism and in the 'psychogenic' theories, each manifestation of the body is explained by symbolisation processes. However, it was inevitable that none of these theories would succeed in giving the psychosomatic phenomenon the overall meaning of its manifestation [7][8][9] because each of them proposes a code for interpreting the 'text' without trying to reintegrate it into a 'context' that would give it its full meaning. The crisis that has shaken psychosomatic medicine is born precisely out of the contradiction between an inspiring demand for 'unity' and 'totality' and the dichotomous interpretations that inexorably betray this demand and divide this unity.…”