STRAIN ON FAMILIES

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32565, 26 March 1971, Page 10

STRAIN ON FAMILIES

Fear played a very real part in the reluctance of some families to take care of members of their families who had been badly injured or were mentally sick, said the senior medical social worker at Tauranga Hospital (Mrs E. M. Richardson) at a national medical social workers’ seminar yesterday.

The family caring for a psychotic patient risked social isolation and frequenty attempted to opt out and leave the paranoiac patient in the care of the community, she said. The title of her address was, “Patients have families too.”

Children bom with congenitil defects or disfiguring birthmarks often had traumatic effects on their families,’ she said. Often the invalid child was overprotected when he could not take the risks of normal character development, and the needs of other members of the family went unnoticed. When there was more than one handicapped member in the family, the family tended

to gear its life to abnormality with an adverse effect on the normal child, Mrs Richards said.

Accidents, especially of the type causing brain damage, amputations, or paraplegia threatened the security of family life. In these cases the patient not only faced pain, but the “bleak prospects of further deterioration,” she said.

Home care of the mentally ill or the manic depressive, imposed severe strain on the family. “The next worse thing to being, depressed is having to live with it,” she said. On discharge the patient and the family remember the events preceding breakdown and had little confidence in their future ability to cope adequately. Such negative expectation impeded recovery, she said.

Personal adjustment of individual members of the family took a long time to assess, she said. The family sometimes had to adapt to a lower standard of living if the father became handicapped and was unable to earn. The communication of

children with parents could be severely impaired if their parents were under prolonged hospital care or illness. Children easily became impatient with the aged, and the old person intolerant to the young. Sick in-laws in the home often brought out longstanding and deep-seated tensions, she said.

In referring these tensions to the medical social worker “the general, practitioner is in the best position possibly to avert a crisis,” she said. Too often the medical social worker only came in contact with the maladjusted at crisis level. There was room in New Zealand for social workers to have a better liaison with the private doctor at preventive and rehabilitation levels, she said. Within the hospital setting inter-disciplinary teamwork and specialised training was essential and within the community there was need for a more comprehensive social work service supplying more positive services such as marriage guidance, she said.

Motor Body Builders.— Officers elected at the annual meeting of the Canterbury Motor Body Builders* Association were: President, Mr K. Rogers; vice-president, Mr E. Leary; committee, Messrs J. Barker, N. Bradv, G; Field, B. Gracey, K. Hill, and T. Pearce. During the meeting prizes were presented to, the apprentices who were class winners in their course at the Christchurch Technical Institute, by Mr C. A. Pay, deputy principal at the institute, as follows.—Panelbeating: Stage I, G. Taylor; stage 11, G. Copsey; stage 111, L. Holland. Coachbuilding: T. Wilkinson.