Abstract
Family health status and its management by the mother in families living in poverty conditions were studied. The hypothesis is that there should be more sick people in families with family conflicts than in those without these. The sample was made up of 30 slum families. Fifteen of these were stressed because health problems (A) and 15 had no problems. The first group had to have consulted to the health system (endogenous or exogenous)in the 3 months prior to selection of the sample whereas the other 15 did not need to. The families were visited, at home, once a week for a period of 6 months. Results indicate that the families of Group A shows significantly more respiratory disease (p.<.0001) or other as digestive, skin, etc. (p < .05) as well as in the total amount of illnesses (p .0001) than families from Group B. In both groups it is the mother who mainly take care of family health and they do not differe in how they deal with symptoms or seek help from a general practitioner. Nevertheless, more Group A mother were of urban origin (p < .03) had no secondary school education(p < .02), were less understood by their husbands (or mate)(p < .02) and had discussions ending in fights (p < .02) than those of Group B. Therefore, these results agreed with the postulate.
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Alvarez, M., Wugaft, F. & Salazar, M. 12. HEALTH AND POVERTY IN FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN. Pediatr Res 23, 649 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198806000-00035
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198806000-00035