title: [The importance of family coherence for mentally handicapped children].
abstract: A lack of perseverance, attention and poor modulated behaviour are important criterions of handicapped children (Dilling et al. 1993). Therefore, instructions have to be repeated quite often, sometimes even by different family members. For this reason, good family coherence might reduce symptoms significantly (Döpfner and Lehmkuhl 1995). The handicapped child might cause less disagreement in families with good coherence, which improves family;s features (Saile et al. 1995). Families of 15 handicapped children were included for evaluation and compared with a matched, healthy control group. Parents were asked to complete a form assessing the family;s features ("Familienklima-Testsystem", Schneewind et al. 1985), "Erziehungspraktiken", (Schneewind et al. 1985). Group comparison was made by the Mann-Whitney-U-Test. Our results strongly suggest, that good coherence seems to have positive effects on family;s features, especially by handicapped children. So we think, that on the one hand good coherence might reduce symptomatology and that on the other hand family's features have protective effects on handicapped children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Regional Hospital of Bolzano, Italy. helmutniederhofer@yahoo.de
authors.forename: Helmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Niederhofer
mesh_terms: D000786:Anger; D002648:Child; D002653:Child Behavior Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation; D003142:Communication; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004645:Empathy; D005195:Family Relations; D005196:Family Therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology*; D019989:Persons with Intellectual Disabilities / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires