PREVENTION RESEARCH ON SOCIAL SUPPORT IN MINORITY GROUPS

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Social supports has been frequently implicated as a mediating variable between stress and psychological symptoms. As a result, interventions manipulating social support systems of high-risk individuals are a common prevention strategy. As a prelude to program development, this study intends to: 1) describe the amounts, types and sources of natural support available to inner-city mothers of chronically ill children and to describe how patterns of support change over time; 2) to identify factors associated with the availability of support to mothers, specifically (a) the intensity of the stressor (measured by the functional incapacity of the child and level of care the child requires); (b) the chronicity of the stressor (acutely ill vs. chronically ill child); (c) presence of other stressors in the mother's life; (d) race/ethic group; 3) analyze how type, amount and sources of support are related to psychological symptomatology in mothers. A prospective longitudinal design is adopted. Over a five-year period we plan to interview 200 mothers whose children are newly diagnosed with a chronic illness and 200 with an acutely ill child and to reinterview them twice at 5 months and 11 months post- diagnosis.