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The literature on children with chronic diseases focuses on the negative consequences of the illness for the child and his family. A new approach, the health promotion approach, suggests focusing on the resources that help the individual to achieve health and wellness (i.e., "salutogenesis"), despite his/her disease.
The objectives of the study are to examine parental characteristics as resources for wellness of adolescents with IDDM and suggest the association between the parent-child care-giving system characteristics and the adolescent's Diabetes regulation, physical health and social adjustment and wellbeing.
The sample will include 80 triads of mother-father-adolescent from intact families with an adolescent with IDDM. The adolescents (age 14-18) were diagnosed as diabetics at least two years earlier. The participants will be recruited through the diabetic clinic of 'Rambam' Hospital. The research data will be collected from several sources: The parents will be interviewed (mother and father) and both the parents and adolescents will complete self-report questionnaires.
The adolescent's home class teacher will complete questionnaires assessing his academic and social adjustment. Finally, health and self-treatment questionnaires will be completed by the adolescent's treating physician. The data will be statistically analyzed with regression and path analyses.
The significance of the research is that it can enhance our understanding on how we can help parents and adolescents with IDDM by offering guidance and counseling to to this group with special needs. Parents' participation in the medical treatment of the diabetics adolescent is a major aspect in attending a balanced endocrine state along with well-being through the developmental stage of adolescence. The unique needs involved in the daily treatment and regulating the diabetes are in competition with the adolescents' need for autonomy and independence.
The major innovation of the proposed study is in the examination of the parental care-giving system as a resource for the adolescents' health and wellness. The proposed study perceives the chronically ill adolescent in a broader context, identifying him/her as a functioning person in other spheres rather than identifying him/her solely with the disease.
This will contribute to our knowledge on how to support the adolescent and his/her family through the medical treating health centers, by focusing on the most suitable support and its channeling in the direction of fulfilling personal and familial resources to achieve wellness of IDDM adolescents and their families.
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