Mental health referral: a weak link in comprehensive care of children with chronic physical illness.

Although children with chronic medical conditions are at increased risk for mental health problems, they and their families receive few mental health services. For a number of reasons, it is unusually difficult to refer these youngsters to traditional mental health resources and this may contribute to the paucity of services that they receive. Significant barriers to referral are contributed by each participant in the process: families, medical staff, and mental health providers.

Marital adjustment to chronic childhood illness: a critique of the literature.

Thirty-four studies of marital adjustment were selected from the literature on family adjustment to chronic childhood illness. Studies were reviewed to determine whether divorce rates were elevated or marital adjustment was poorer compared with that of families of healthy children. Of 23 studies reporting divorce rates, only six used a group of families without a chronically ill child for comparison.

Understanding the impact of chronic childhood illness on families.

A great deal has been written about mothers and their relationships with their ill children. Fathers, however, have been relatively excluded from the research, as they have been from many pediatrician-mother-child interactions. Although it has been noted that some fathers tend to withdraw from the family, in fact very little is known about the impact of childhood illness on their lives.