[A study on the grief and coping pattern of mothers who have a chronically ill child]

This study was done in order to identify symptoms of grief and patterns of coping in mothers of chronically ill children. Nurses, as health professionals, must understand helpful coping methods for mothers who have chronically ill children. Based on this knowledge, nurses can develop appropriate nursing intervention strategies, and so help the mothers to develop effective ways of coping and give support to mothers with chronically ill children in process of coping with this grief. The research questions guiding this research were: 1. what type of grief does the mother have at the time of child's diagnosis and at present? 2. what are the problems confronting the mother? 3. what are the coping patterns of the mother? 4. is there a difference according to child's diagnosis in the mother's grief and coping pattern? Ths subject for this study were obtained by taking a convenience sample of 120 mothers with a chronically ill child. Interviews took place in four medical school hospitals and one medical center in Seoul from March 19th to May 16th 1990. The tools used in this study were Mcfarlan's (1983), Grief contents, Folkman & Lazarus (1983), Ways of Coping and Hymovich's (1983) the Chronicity Impact and Coping Instrument. The findings were as follows; 1. Grief items had a maximum score of three points. The highest item scores at the time of diagnosis, were in order, heart broken, talkative, and could not do anything, at the present, 'talkative', 'heart broken' and 'busy myself with other things'. 2. The problems confronting the mothers were 'worry about ill child's future', 'her responsibilities in taking care of the ill child.' 3. Most of the mothers used similar ways of coping, that is 'problem focused coping', 'detachment', 'wishful thinking', 'seeking social support' and 'focusing on the positive and hardly any of them used 'tension reduction'. 4. There was a significant difference in coping methods according to the child's diagnosis, leukemia, cancer hemophillia and nephrotic syndrome. The most frequently used coping method was detachment, especially for the mother of the child with. 5. At the time of diagnosis there was a positive correlation between the level of grief and the coping method of detachment and seeking social support.