Sibling relationships of children with chronic illness and their siblings' selfperception

Only a few studies about sibling relationship of children with chronic illness have been reported in Japan, therefore we studied the sibling and parental relationships of siblings of chronically ill children with special reference to the siblings' self-perception. Questionnaires were given to 28 siblings of 24 patients and to 50 college freshmen with healthy siblings, in order to evaluate how the healthy siblings feel and behave towards their family members including the ill children and parents. In addition, medical records of each patient were collected from the patients' doctors. Self-perception scores were also measured by using the Simplified Japanese Self-Perception Scale for Adolescents which consisted of 13 domains. The results were 1) The patients' siblings thought that they behaved more nicely towards their parents than the control siblings did, while they behaved and felt almost similarly to the patients; 2) Friends of the patients' siblings were more reluctant to play with the patients of low performance status than those of high performance status; 3) The mean of total score of self-perception was higher in patients' siblings than the control siblings; 4) The patients' siblings were more reluctant to play with the patients in the total low score group of self-perception than in the total high score group; and 5) The scores of 3 out of 13 domains of self-perception were higher in the total high score group than in the total low score group. These results suggest that the self-perception can be used to determine the coping abilities of patients's siblings.