Do all the parents of children with congenital heart disease suffer from cardiopatitis?
Yes. It’s a normal and natural reaction for parents to go through. It’s a period of working through the feelings of sadness, grief, anger, resentment, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness. This takes time. The intensity and length of emotional reactions varies between individuals. Caring for a child with a chronic illness has been identified as one of the most stressful experiences for any family, but parents of children newly diagnosed with ConHD report greater stress levels than parents of children newly diagnosed with other chronic illnesses (such as cystic fibrosis). The emotions clearly described in the article are more often seen in the short term. Parental stress and coping styles, however, change over time and are influenced by the course of the illness. My own research in 2002 and Spijkerboer’s research in 2007 in Rotterdam showed that in the long-term, parents of children with operated ConHD in fact report better mental health (less distress, less somatic symptoms, less anxie
