THE IMPACT OF FAMILY-RELATIONS ON COPING PROCESSES OF CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WITH PSYCHIATRIC-DISORDERS

The importance of family relations for the therapy of psychiatric diso rders in children and adolescents is discussed reporting results from an empirical study carried out in an inpatient sample of a child and a dolescent psychiatric unit with regard to the quality of mother-child resp. father-child relation and its influence on coping processes. Whe ther adolescents suffering from a psychiatric disorder are able to cop e with their problems during the course of a therapy, depends on their individual and social ressources. Therapy outcome is to a great exten t influenced by the emotional quality of their family relations. Hosti lity and rejection as well as unstructured and disorganized parental b ehavior contribute to a negative outcome. A differentiated analysis sh ows further that the relation between the adolescents and their father s is particularly important for therapy prognosis. Nevertheless, one h as to consider the respective relations with both parents for therapy prognosis, as problems with one parent may be partly compensated by a good relationship with the other parent. Finally, the cooperation betw een parents and clinical staff is discussed. Data and experiences show that interest and readiness of parents (mothers as well as fathers) f or a close cooperation are higher than generally expected.