title: A family/systems approach to illness-maintaining behaviors in chronically ill adolescents.
abstract: A distressingly significant number of chronic, seriously ill adolescents demonstrate poor medical management of their illnesses through "illness-maintaining behaviors." These behaviors are defined in this article as any action that compromises chronically ill adolescents' care and prevents them from functioning optimally. Current conceptualizations of illness-maintaining behaviors offer explanations that view these behaviors as individually focused, using either psychodynamic or behavioral models. This article, however, presents a family systems model of illness-maintaining behaviors. A therapeutic framework leading to specific intervention strategies is also developed.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D005190:Family; D005196:Family Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010349:Patient Compliance; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D012803:Sick Role