Familial coping with chronic illness

Familial Coping with Chronic Illness suggests clues to the functioning of familial coping strategies with chronic illness. Lifelong coping with chronic illness is often not completely restricted to individual coping in isolation. Rather, familial coping also influences the outcomes of coping strategies. Through individual coping strategies, patients often ignore their health problem during the stable course of the illness in order to protect the family from the reality of the illness situation. However, to deal with intensifying illness symptoms and complication, they begin to play the role of a sick person (i. e., sick-role) and thereby gain the advantages of improvisational family support. In contrast, familial coping strategy requires changing family reality through reconstruction of social roles, and establishment of the chronic-role which serve to re-achieve the relative balance of family life while maintaining the hierarchy of power within the family — which is illustrated by the specific pattern of family support.