The article is devoted to the characteristics of the relations between sibs in families with a mentally ill child. The features of these interactions in the context of one of the sibs mental illness are analyzed; the factors of inter-sibs relations configuration are considered. The main factor among them is gender. This aspect affects both the extent of mutual emotional intimacy between sibs and extent of involvement in the problem-solving of mentally ill brother or sister. Among other factors to be noted are the order of mentally ill childbirth, the age of healthy sibling at the moment of the first manifestation of illness, type of dis-ease as such and its duration. The conclusion is drawn about the necessity of so-cial work with healthy siblings in the process of the rehabilitation of families with a mentally ill child.
Article represents the review of foreign literature on the problem of the inter-siblings relations burdened by a mental disorder of one of them. These articles were published between 1962 and 2015, covering the main milestones of interest to this problem. In the late sixties in medicine the research was directed at estimating the stress level and psychological features of a joint growing with a sick brother or sister. The attention was paid also to the social and emotional consequences which adult siblings might experience. This direction went in parallel with growing of self-help groups’ popularity in Western Europe and the USA. Another factor was the increasing popularity of narratives about the joint socialization of healthy and mentally sick children. In the 1980s the research projects focused on description and studying healthy sibling problems such as the lower self-esteem, stigmatization, and shame. Later the scientific interest shifted towards studying the variables which are associated with the burden which healthy siblings experienced during cohabitation with a sick brother or sister. It was conncected with using the multidimensional data anal-ysis in social and psychological researches and emergence of new methods of empirical information collection.
The purpose of the work is building up interest to the problems discussed in the article with the aim to use the presented data in social practices. The novelty of the article is the reference to a topic of the gender aspects of inter-siblings relations in the context of one of siblings mental illness.read in PDF >>>
