How mothers make sense of the psychological needs of healthy siblings of children with paediatric cancer

Abstract

This study aims at exploring the psychological needs of healthy siblings of children with cancer as understood by their mothers. For this purpose a retrospective study will be used. By adopting a Phenomenological approach and using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as my tool for analysis, four interviews were conducted with mothers with at least two children, one of whom would have been suffering from cancer not less than four years ago, but has since recovered. The results show the main psychological needs that surfaced during data collection. Furthermore the effects undergone by healthy siblings due to the chronic illness of their sick sibling together with changes in the sibling relationship and the consequence of this experience on the healthy children also emerged in the results.