A Family/Systems Approach to Illness‐Maintaining Behaviors in Chronically III Adolescents

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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.

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