Mary O'Connor Harris,
Executive Director
Family Assessment,Counseling & Educational Services
Send letter to journal:
Re: The need for parents with children with chronic disease to have counseling support services
maryFACES{at}home.com Mary O'Connor Harris
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Our agency focuses on the needs of the family going through
separation and divorce. 20% of the families have children with some form
of learning or physical disability. The stress on a marriage is difficult
with children who don't have physical problems, and is enormously
compounded when a child is chronically ill. So many families who weathered
the storm during the most difficult times of the child's development, go
on to divorce when the storm is over. While
this phenomenon seems contradictory, the aftermath is often a time when
the couple cannot regroup and find their marriage again...so much time was
invested for so long to the child, and the energy to devote to the
marriage had been given to the child's needs.
We agree that the family is in grave need at the time of learning of the
child's illness to receive the psychological support, and to help the
family set boundaries for time for each other, getting caregivers.
The recent family who brought their son into a hospital and
"dropped him off" was in the news two weeks ago. The family was exhausted
beyond measure, and were being considered abusive. We need to find
caregivers to help families with the stress from being overtime parents.
The anecdotal information is gleaned from 15 years expeerience as a
Marriage & Family Therapist in practice and supervising those who work
with families.
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