Family Communication, Connections, and Health Transitions : Going Through This Together

This series examines the powerful influences of human and mediated communication in delivering care and promoting health. The contributions analyze the ways that strategic communication humanizes and increases access to quality care as well as examining the use of communication to encourage proactive health promotion.

When family members experience a diagnosis of a chronic disease (e.g., cancer) or a health crisis (e.g., postpartum depression), not only the diagnosed individuals but entire families experience immediate and long-term stress as a consequence. Families with members dealing with serious health conditions may be confronted with significant challenges posed by treatment regimes, impacts on day-to-day activities, disruption of family roles, the threat of possible death, and a host of psychosocial challenges. This book is about families facing these challenges, uncertain about what to do, how to help, or how the condition will affect their daily life. Providing a coherent discussion of original research that examines communication patterns and processes involved in the day-to-day management of health conditions, this book lays bare the raw emotional experiences of families communicating with one another amid uncertainty and, for some, in the face of death.