In the following master’s thesis, the author investigated how the family dynamic of a family is affected after the diagnosis of schizophrenia. In the theoretical part, she defines and investigates schizophrenia as a mental disorder and presents the perception of the illness from both the point of view of the diagnosed individual and that individual's family members.
The empirical data was collected in the form of an experiment involving nine participants. Each participant was a close relative of an individual with schizophrenia and lived with that individual before, during and after the diagnosis. We set out to answer the question: how does the diagnosis of schizophrenia of one family member affect the other family members and their family dynamic? How does the family dynamic in a family change, after one of the members of that family is diagnosed with schizophrenia?
We wanted to learn how individual family members perceived the family dynamic before the occurrence of the illness, during the initial stages (when symptoms had already begun but had not yet been diagnosed), and in the period following an official diagnosis.
The candidate used a prewritten semi-structured interview. To analyze the qualitative data, collected from the interview, the author used content analysis. They compared the way in which the subjects talked about their experience in the following three periods: before the occurrence of symptoms, initial stages of symptom development, and after diagnosis.
The results show that in each of the families, the family dynamic within it was affected by the diagnosis of the illness. The nature of the effect varied from family to family; some were affected in a positive way and some in a negative way. We discovered that changes occurred in each of the three times periods that were tested. Only a few families experienced a positive change. Those families that experienced a negative change do not have access to the resources and support they would need in order to effectively come to terms with the mental illness. The profession should pay particular attention to these families and offer them appropriate and comprehensive help and support. Many of the participants did not receive sufficient help, nor were they appropriately informed on all the avenues of support accessible to them, which proves that more attention should be directed towards spreading public awareness of available means of support.
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