PITFALLS OF FAMILY LIFE: CHANGES IN FAMILY DYNAMICS FOLLOWING ILLNESS

Families coping with illness are at risk of encountering a wide variety of problems. For some families, the stress of rehabilitation makes old relationship problems worse. Other families develop unhealthy solutions to their fears for one another about the anticipated impact of illness; or they may become involved in unhealthy struggles with one another in the aftershock of illness. No matter how loving or healthy your family may be, the stress of illness heightens your risk of developing unhealthy relationship patterns.
Before describing the various troublesome family reactions to illness that should be guarded against, I want to stress that problems in a family are seldom due to a single cause, and a given family problem seldom has a single effect.
A complex medical-behavioral-emotional-family event such as a heart attack taxes any family's ability to remain reasonably organized. It is my opinion that every family goes through phases in which some of the following problem modes of relating occur. The crucial issue in evaluating how well you are adjusting as a family is the extent to which these patterns persist despite your efforts to adapt.
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