Family Adaptation to Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

An important effect of the application of systems theory to families is the increasing interest of both family academicians and practitioners in the response of the family unit to crisis situations. To date, family stress and adaptation literature seems to have been focused on families’ response to traumatic natural and/or social disaster such as economic depression or war.¹ Families suffering from these kinds of stressors share their trauma with many other families, their circumstance is socially common rather than socially isolated, and they receive much social support. Other than Farber’s² work on families of retarded children, little systematic research attention has been directed toward families suffering from traumatic events which occur randomly to individual families. These families are socially isolated and receive little social support. The research described in this article focuses on a socially isolated crisis, that is, the traumatic physical disablement of a family member.