The Psychology of Childhood Illness

Abstract

The Psychology of Childhood Illness is a seminal text for physicians, educators, nurses, therapists, and others in the healthcare professions who come into contact with chronically ill children and their families. The author identifies as a prime objective of the book the consideration of the effects of long-term illness on the social, intellectual, and personal development of the child. This objective is most specifically achieved with a comprehensive review of the literature on children's ideas about health and illness and how these ideas are assimilated by children at various stages in their cognitive development. These descriptions of children's 'health belief' models are then integrated with some clear and practical intervention strategies for caring for sick children and their families. The author provides some attention-getting data to convince the reader of the importance of this information, i.e., 50% of children under the age of 7 are admitted to hospitals, sick children are at greater risk for behavioral and emotional problems, and that children with long or repeated hospital admissions are most at risk. The strength of this volume, aside from the fact that it is concerned with a critical health issue, is that it is clear, well organized, logical, and practical. The information contained within the overall presentation of the text will be immediately useful to a practitioner. The author successfully translates for adults what is probably going on in the inner world of the child, or at the very least, a way to gain access to that information. Eiser explains Piaget's stages of cognitive development, reviews the literature on children's attitudes about illness and hospitalization, and then offers valuable insight into how families and family systems are affected. The book contains several helpful tables that are comprehensive and easy to read. Also by way of illustration, are 4 separate chapters that elaborate concepts that have been identified and explains these concepts within the context of a specific illness (phenylketonuria, diabetes, asthma, and leukemia). To summarize, this book is a comprehensive, compact, relevant volume that should be a 'core' textbook for medical educators, physicians, and medical personnel as well as child and school psychologists. The author has effectively integrated cognitive development and the psychology of coping with illness in order to promote better understanding of chronically ill children and their families and to provide health care providers with strategies for positive intervention. - K. M. Glaser (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)