Developmental considerations in children and early adolescents with spinal cord injury.
Although there has been increasing awareness of the psychologic effects of illness and hospitalization in children and early adolescents, those who have sustained spinal cord injury (SCI) have received scant notice in the literature. A developmental approach in work with hospitalized children having SCI has been found helpful in trying to meet the psychologic needs of these children, and in guiding staff to better understand their behavior and to implement care more appropriately. In this approach to children and early adolescents with SCI, developmental status is evaluated and each child's response to SCI in relation to the prominent issues of developmental stage is assessed. A productive byproduct of this approach is that family dynamics become more obvious and both patient and family behavior are better understood by those providing medical care.
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D002652:Child Behavior; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005190:Family; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000523:psychology*