HEALTH AND FAMILY DYNAMICS

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HEALTH AND FAMILY DYNAMICS

• Kai-Lit Phua, PhD FLMI
• Associate Professor
• School of Medicine Health Sciences
• Monash University Malaysia

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Biographical Details

• Kai-Lit Phua received his BA (cum laude) in
  Public Health Population Studies from the
  University of Rochester and his PhD in Sociology
  (Medical Sociology) from Johns Hopkins
  University. He also holds professional
  qualifications from the insurance industry.
• Prior to joining academia, he worked as a
  research statistician for the Maryland Department
  of Health and Mental Hygiene and for the Managed
  Care Department of a leading insurance company in
  Singapore.
• He was awarded an Asian Public Intellectual
  Senior Fellowship by the Nippon Foundation in
  2003.

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Highly Recommended

• The Lost Children of Rockdale County
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/geor
  gia/etc/script.html
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/geor
  gia/isolated

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WHAT IS A FAMILY?

• Major social institution found in all human
  societies
• Usual image working father housewife mother
  dependent children
• Reality This is becoming less and less common as
  more more mothers work outside the home. Also
  because of rising divorce rates.

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New Forms of the Family

• Cohabiting couples (with or without children)
• Single parent family (because of teen pregnancy,
  divorce or abandonment)
• Blended family
• Homosexual couples e.g. Netherlands has legalised
  homosexual marriages

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Functions of the Family

• Functions
• Companionship (marry for love)
• Sex and reproduction
• Socialisation of children
• Social support (especially during crises)
• Economic cooperation

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Family Structure

• Nuclear family Father, mother and kids
• Extended family The above plus grandparents
• Family life cycle structure of an individual
  family changes over time

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The Family is Changing

• Changing roles (role expected behaviour that
  goes with a social position)
• People marry later, have fewer kids, and also
  have them later
• More divorces
• Single parent families (these are more likely to
  be poor)

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The Family is Changing

• More working mothers and latchkey kids
• Children may be unsupervised and feel neglected
  and unloved
• Working mothers are stressed (Supermom Syndrome
  and Double Burden of Women)

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Stressed Working Mothers

• Examples
• Female nurses with children
• Female doctors with children
• Role conflict Being a good doctor to ones
  patients versus being a good mother to ones kids

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Effects of Family on Health

• 1) Effects on Illness Behaviour
• Stoic? self-medicate? seek alternative
  medicine? Effects on medical adherence
• e.g. religion health (faith healing, Jehovahs
  Witness)

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Effects of Family on Health

• 2) Effects on patients with long term illness
• Quality of care provided by family members
  (female relatives as care providers for kids,
  husbands, in-laws and elderly parents)

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Effects of Family on Health

• 3) Family and social networks promote health
• Socially isolated have poorer mental health
  recover slower from sickness

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The Dysfunctional Family

• Troubled family that has a negative effect on
  the physical or psychological well-being of its
  individual family members

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Effects of Family on Health

• 4) Dysfunctional families and poor parenting
• Child abuse neglect, physical abuse, verbal
  abuse, sexual abuse
• Overindulgence
• Domestic violence
• Alcoholism and substance-abuse in the family
• Gambling problems

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NOTE !!

• Families with divorced parents are NOT
  NECESSARILY dysfunctional families !

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Effects of Family on Health

• 5) Learning of health-related behaviour
• e.g. quality of diet and health (including
  obesity), smoking and passive smoking, alcohol
  (religion alcohol consumption), risk-taking
  behaviour, values and behaviour (including sexual
  behaviour)

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Effects of Family on Health

• 6) Family changes can affect health
• Stressful life events such as marital breakdown
  and divorce, death of spouse etc. increase risk
  of sickness for other family members
• Large families can affect health of kids in a
  negative manner

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Effect of Sickness on the Family

• 1) Effect of chronic disease or death
• Role changes if the wife gets sick or dies, the
  husband has to adjust (or vice-versa)
• Economic pressures family member stops work to
  care for the sick, patient is unable to work,
  medical bills become high

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Effect of Sickness on the Family

• 2) Stress from taking care of sick family
  member
• e.g. Alzheimers disease, serious mental
  illness, relative who is bed-ridden or
  incontinent
• 3) Stigmatizing diseases such as HIV/AIDS
• e.g. hostility from neighbours,
  abandonment by own family

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THE END

• THANK YOU