Siblings’ Perceptions of Their ADHD-Diagnosed Sibling’s Impact on the Family System

Kerry King, Daleen Alexander and Joseph Seabi
Additional contact information
Kerry King: Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS, Gauteng 2050, South Africa
Daleen Alexander: Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS, Gauteng 2050, South Africa
Joseph Seabi: Department of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS, Gauteng 2050, South Africa

IJERPH, 2016, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-10

Abstract: This qualitative study explored siblings’ perceptions of the impact a sibling diagnosed with ADHD has within the family system. Specific focus was placed on the different ways these different sibling cohorts were parented. Participants constituted eight adult females with a mean age of 20 years from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews and was analysed thematically. The four themes that emerged from the interviews include differential parental treatment, rejection, discrepancy with discipline, and the parentified child. Specifically, the results of this study revealed feelings of differential parental treatment and discipline that took place in the home and rejection experienced by the non-ADHD sibling. There was also a common theme of a parentified child, who had to carry a burden of caring for their sibling with ADHD. The non-diagnosed siblings perceive themselves to be particularly negatively impacted. The results are discussed in light of the previous empirical studies, and recommendations are made.

Keywords: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); sibling’s perceptions; parenting differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/9/910/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/9/910/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:13:y:2016:i:9:p:910-:d:78124

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().