Joy L. Berrenberg

Assessing the impact of chronic disease on the relationship between parents and their adolescents

The diagnosis of a chronic disease poses many challenges for parents, their children and their relationship together. A child with a chronic disease is more dependent on parents, and often has less opportunity to participate in peer activities. Worries about the illness, experienced and anticipated pain, and the need for continual monitoring may set the child apart from peers and healthy siblings. While such a diagnosis is likely to be challenging at any age, it may be especially so during adolescence, when relationships are being negotiated and redefined. At a time when others are establishing their independence and asserting themselves in the wider environment, adolescents with chronic disease may find themselves in a situation of enforced dependency, often physically restricted compared with their peers and having to rely on parents for practical and emotional support. Much attention has been paid to concepts of ‘restriction’ and ‘overprotection’ [ 11. The transition to adolescence is difficult for all families, but appears to be even more so when compounded by the presence of serious illness. Chronic disease heightens parents’ concern and as a consequence, they may attempt to restrict the child’s activities and become more intrusive than parents of healthy children. For example, Walker et al. [2] reported that mothers with a child with cystic fibrosis experienced many difficulties, but that these became greater when the child reached adolescence. For parents, a particular difficulty may focus on separating concerns about the illness from more general issues which confront many families during this period. The following example is very typical of parents’ dilemmas: “She came out of school in a foul mood, and I said ‘What’s the matter? Have you not felt well today?’ And she got crosser and crosser and shut herself in her room and I really was worried and didn’t know whether to ring the hospital. And then that evening she talked about how she had invited a few people round for Friday night but now somconc else was having a huge party and had invited some of her friends to that (but not her) and she felt her party would be a washout. And then I felt I had been so stupid. I thought it was about the cancer but really it was about something at school and I just hadn’t been able to see that at all”. Discussion of the ways in which family relationships are affected by chronic or

Blaming the victim : when disease-prevention programs misfire

This study sought to determine whether or not a disease prevention program might have anegative impact on attitudes towards disease victims. Knowledge of, and attitudes towards AIDS and several other serious diseases were assessed before and after college students viewed a filmed educational program on AIDS. Results showed that, compared to a control group, participants who had seen the AIDS film reported significantlygreater fear and dislike of a hypothetical AIDS patient. The film also significantly enhanced participants’ perceptions that AIDS is a preventable disease. Results are discussed in terms of the possibility that health-education programs emphasizing preventability may inadvertently increase peoples’ tendency to blame the victim.

A Classroom Exercise in Impression Formation

This classroom exercise provides students with an opportunity to examine aspects of their own impression-formation processes. The data generated can be used to stimulate discussion about the origins of implicit personality theories, person prototypes, and the accuracy of first impressions.

MAINTENANCE OF TYPE A BEHAVIOR- SUPPORT FOR A TYPE-SIMILARITY HYPOTHESIS

This study tested two hypotheses that might account for the maintenance of the Type A behavior pattern. 56 male and 56 female Type A and B subjects rated the attractiveness of a stimulus person described as a Type A male, Type A female, Type B male, or Type B female. Type A subjects preferred the Type A stimulus person, while Type B subjects were mote attracted to the Type B stimulus person. These findings supported a type-similarity hypothesis.

Perceived control: contingent and noncontingent feedback in pulse-rate change and reduction in depressive cognitions.

The present study tested the hypothesis that perceived control results in reduced depressive cognitions. Subjects were divided into two groups, high and low in depressive cognitions (HDC and LDC) based on their scores on a Depression Scale. Subjects (HDC and LDC) were assigned randomly to one of the following treatment conditions: contingent feedback (CF), noncontingent (yoked) feedback (YF), or no feedback (NF) in pulse-rate (PR) regulation. Half the subjects were instructed to decrease (D) and half were instructed to increase (I) PR. The study consisted of three sessions spaced one week apart. Each session was comprised of a three-minute baseline (nonfeedback) trial followed by a 15-minute experimental session. After each experimental session, subjects completed a questionnaire which assessed how well they felt they regulated PR, and the extent to which they attributed such regulation to their ability, effort, the difficulty or ease of the task, and luck. After three sessions, subjects were posttested on the Depression Scale. Results indicated that a significant, though small, reduction in depressive cognitions occurred for CF and YF subjects who were instructed to decrease PR, and this effect was mediated by subjects attributing PR regulation to ability and effort. Results are discussed in terms of the effect that perceived control may have on attributions and reported depression. Also, limitations regarding the generalizability of the findings to a clinical population are discussed.