"Health is being able to do normal things" - specificities of children's conceptions of health and illness in children with cancer disease
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31877/on.2013.24.04Keywords:
children’s conceptions of health and illness, chronic disease, malignant diseaseAbstract
This study is part of a wider research project on children’s conceptions of health and disease aimed to investigate if the experience of having different chronic diseases has an influence on children’s conceptualizations about these phenomena. Accordingly the conceptions of health and disease were analyzed in children with different types of chronic disease, specifically cancer, asthma
and diabetes, assuming that these diseases and their treatments involve distinct experiences.
Participants were 79 children aged 6 to 13 years diagnosed with chronic disease and who were followed at three health institutions in the North of Portugal. Thirty children had asthma, 23 diabetes and 26 malignant diseases. Children’s conceptions of health and illness were collected using the method of “Draw and write” (Williams, Wetton & Moon, 1989) and data was analyzed through content analysis using a system by Boruchovitch and Mednick (1997, 2002), adapted by Lima and Lemos (2008) and previously validated (inter-observer agreement -93%).
Findings revealed statistically significant differences in some aspects of the conceptions of health and illness depending on the type of pathology. The results of this study suggest that the experience of having a serious disease like cancer has a strong influence on children’s conceptions about health and illness, which can be used to guide support services to children with oncological disease.
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