FAMILIES AND THE LIFE TRANSITION OF FIRST TIME MENTAL ILLNESS: SWEPT ALONG ON THE WAVES (HOSPITALIZED).
Contributors: University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 240
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Mental Health.; Sociology, Individual and Family Studies.
Description: A first time psychiatric admission of a family member with acute mental illness is a life transition for the family. In-depth interviews were conducted with family members present at the time of hospitalization (N = 16 families). Interviews were done with this family group and with individual family members during the first week of the hospitalization to explore family management of the transition. Data were analyzed using Life Transition Theory.

The purpose of this study was to explore how families managed the uncertainty of an initial hospitalization for a newly diagnosed mentally ill family member. Prior to the hospitalization of the family member, families described phases of becoming aware that there was a psychiatric problem. Families described experiencing awareness of the mental illness through either amplification or accumulation of patient symptoms. Turning points occurred when a decisive change happened, such as an epiphany, where hospitalization was sought for the ill member.

Major characteristics requiring management for families with a member having a first time psychiatric hospitalization centered around sources of uncertainty, personal fragility, and encroachments. Families attempted to make meaning about the illness by the processes of sorting it out, establishing boundaries, normalizing, and creating options. Strategies included comparative testing, testing new options, storytelling, and attempting to find the key for the illness. Specific strategies for each of these areas were described by families. These strategies helped to refine Life Transition Theory, since families in this study were interviewed as they experienced this life transition.

Implications for psychiatric team members included having a better understanding of sources necessitating family management during the initial psychiatric hospitalization. Nursing interventions, such as fostering storytelling about the illness and hospitalization, providing information, both written and oral, for all families members, and role modeling how to deal with the patient, are indicated as supportive for family members. Further research is needed to explicate and refine other processes inherent in this life transition.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-04, Section: B, page: 1935.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE, 1994.

School code: 0263.