Sibling stories of parental mental distress

Wendy O'Neill; Pieter W. Nel; Nic Horley; Lizette Nolte

doi:10.1111/1467-6427.12452

Sibling stories of parental mental distress

Wendy O'Neill, Pieter W. Nel, Nic Horley, Lizette Nolte

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a study exploring sibling stories of parental mental distress and the societal discourses that may have contributed to the adult siblings' sense‐making. Four sibling pairs were purposively recruited and interviewed, using a narrative inquiry approach. Two main plots were constructed through analysis of the participants' narratives: ‘The story of us’ and ‘We are who we are because of what happened’. Results highlighted that the identity construction of each sibling and the collective identities of the sibling pairs are influenced by the parental mental health context. The findings also suggest a change in the siblings' meaning‐making from childhood to adulthood. These findings are considered along with the implications for systemic practice and research.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	121-139
Number of pages	19
Journal	Journal of Family Therapy
Volume	46
Issue number	2
Early online date	7 Apr 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.12452
Publication status	Published - May 2024

Keywords

intergenerational family therapy
sibling relationships
sibling experience
parents' psychological distress
parental mental health

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10.1111/1467-6427.12452Licence: CC BY

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© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Family Therapy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 1.14 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "This paper reports on the results of a study exploring sibling stories of parental mental distress and the societal discourses that may have contributed to the adult siblings' sense‐making. Four sibling pairs were purposively recruited and interviewed, using a narrative inquiry approach. Two main plots were constructed through analysis of the participants' narratives: {\textquoteleft}The story of us{\textquoteright} and {\textquoteleft}We are who we are because of what happened{\textquoteright}. Results highlighted that the identity construction of each sibling and the collective identities of the sibling pairs are influenced by the parental mental health context. The findings also suggest a change in the siblings' meaning‐making from childhood to adulthood. These findings are considered along with the implications for systemic practice and research.",

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AU - Nolte, Lizette

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Sibling stories of parental mental distress

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Keywords

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