Parental Resilience: Phenomenological Study of Parents with Autoimmune Disease

Abstract

Autoimmune disease in children is increasing and is one of the mostdeadly diseases. When there is a condition that a child is diagnosed with autoimmune disease, it will cause tension and anxiety for the parents. Parents’ lives will also be different as the impact of their parenting way and care of children with autoimmune disease since fatigue, anxiety, and worry emerge when they literally have to deal with that situation. Therefore, parents' ability to resist and recover from stress, known as parental resilience, plays a very important role. Parents’ capacity to overcome and reduce the effects of stress can emerge through resilience. The aim of this research was to explore the life experience of parents with resilience of having children with autoimmune disease from a qualitative perspective. Method of this research was exploratory-qualitatif approach in which purposive sampling was carried out to recruit parents who had children with autoimmune disease, data was collected using interview techniques and data was analyzed using thematic analysis. The results showed that there were six identified themes: emotional reaction to diagnosis, active coping, social support, financial challenges, spiritual meaning and gratitude, motivation to survive. Conclusion: this study identified several specific factors that influenced the resilience of parents who had children suffering from autoimmune disease.