Family Functioning and Adolescents’ Psychological Well-Being in Families with a TBI Parent

Abstract

This study aimed at examining the interrelation between family functioning and children’s mental health in families with a brain injured parent. The first goal of this study was to investigate the predictive power of fam- ily functioning for children’s psychological well-being. Second, differential sub-dimensions of family function- ing were examined in respect of their predictive power for children’s psychological adaptation. Third, coping strategies on the family system level were differentiated in terms of their predictive power both for family func- tioning and for children’s psychosocial adjustment. 58 families were included in the current study. The following instruments were used: Youth Self Report, Family Crisis Oriented Personal Scales, and Family Assessment Device. Family dysfunction as a whole positively correlates with psychological symptoms of adolescents; four sub-dimensions of family functioning predicted children’s problems, namely affective responsiveness, affective involvement, roles, and communication. This research is all the more informative as the studies on the subject are nearly inexistent, and since it focuses on a category of utmost value—children.