Flourishing and Family Connectedness Among Adolescents Living with a Chronic Illness

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Health, Growth, Injury

Abstract

Research Objective: The current study examines relations among adolescent flourishing, family connectedness, and the prevalence of a chronic illness among adolescents. We explore whether chronic illness status moderates the associations between family connectedness and flourishing.
Research Question: What is the association of flourishing to family connectedness among children with and without a chronic illness?
Preliminary Literature Review
The World Health Organization (1948) defines health as complete physical, mental, and social well-being, with the caveat that health is not simply the absence of disease. The construct of flourishing describes the mental and social aspects of health (Keyes, 2002). The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) (CAHMI, 2016) measures flourishing as social competence, parent/child relationship characteristics, emotional regulation, curiosity, and the ability to finish tasks. Flourishing is particularly important to understand in adolescence, which has been described as a “turning point” in the lifespan (Elder & Shanahan, 2006).
Family factors are especially important for understanding positive mental health and adjustment in youth (Arango et al., 2019; Chew et al., 2018; Foster et al., 2017; Ghriwati et al., 2017; Houltberg et al., 2011). Family connectedness is characterized by closeness, warmth, support, encouragement of shared time together, and open communication (Manzi & Brambilla, 2014). Research has identified family connection as a key factor to examine in terms of the association between chronic illness and flourishing, because family connectedness is a critical aspect of positive family functioning.
Methodology
A nationally representative sample of 50,212 children who were part of the 2016 NSCH was included in the final survey. A subsample of 16,491 adolescents aged 13-17 years old from all families with teens from the final survey were included in the present study. Measures included the prevalence of chronic illness, family connectedness scale, and an adolescent flourishing scale utilized in the NSCH data. The main analysis was a hierarchical regression, conducted to test whether connectedness predicts flourishing. The interaction of family connectedness and chronic illness was entered in the final step to test whether chronic illness status moderates the association between family connectedness and flourishing.
Findings
As depicted in Table 1, the final model was statistically significant (F(5, 16485) = 594.36, p < .001), accounting for 15.3% of the variance in adolescent flourishing (R2 = .153). The family connectedness x chronic illness prevalence interaction was statistically significant, indicating that illness moderated the association between family connectedness and flourishing (R2Δ = .001, FΔ(1, 16485) = 14.36, p < .001). As shown in Figure 1, when family connectedness was relatively high, chronically ill youth were more similar to their healthy peers in terms of flourishing, as compared to when family connectedness was relatively low.
Implications for Practitioners and Researchers
Heath care professionals can use these findings to assess patients’ flourishing, family dynamics, and the impact of chronic illness on individual factors in order to provide appropriate coping strategies for adolescents living with a chronic illness. Future studies can further explore relations between family closeness and adolescent flourishing for children with a chronic illness and their families.

Authors

• Shannon Lummer, Montclair State University
  Presenting Author

• Sara E Goldstein, Montclair State University
  Non-Presenting Author