Handicap and rehabilitation: two types of information upsetting family organization

This article aims to show that the birth of a physically handicapped child should be regarded as powerful information, compelling the family to reorganize. The three subsystems most frequently challenged by the onset of a handicap are examined: the extended family, the couple, and the siblings. Further potent information involving the whole family arises in the rehabilitation program by placing demands on parents that may radically upset the existing equilibrium, and inevitably entailing a highly significant relationship with the child's therapists. Rehabilitation staff should be adequately trained to monitor the various phases during which family members adjust to both these types of information (handicap and rehabilitation) in order to ward off the development of dysfunctional games. A family therapy approach is appropriate in the all too many cases in which a rigid dysfunctional game has already set in such that the handicapped member is playing the role of identified patient.