TRAJECTORIES OF ADAPTATION IN PEDIATRIC CHRONIC ILLNESS - THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

This study used individual growth modeling to examine individual diffe rence and group difference models of adaptation. The adaptation of 27 children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) and 40 children with insulin-dependent diabetes meilitus (IDDM) was tracked for 18 months from diagnosis. A control group of 62 healthy children was followed ov er the same time period. Clustering procedures indicated that child an d family adaptation could be described by a number of distinct adaptat ion trajectories, independent of diagnostic soup membership. In contra st, parental adaptation trajectory was associated with diagnostic grou p membership and control over disease activity for the JRA group and w ith diagnostic group membership for healthy controls. The observation of common patterns across trajectory sets, as well as the finding that trajectories were differentially related to a number of variables of interest, support the use of trajectories to represent adaptation to c hronic disease.