Children of Imprisoned Parents and Their Coping Strategies: A Systematic Review

Stephanie Heinecke Thulstrup and Leena Eklund Karlsson
Additional contact information
Stephanie Heinecke Thulstrup: Unit for Health Promotion Research, University of Southern Denmark, Niels Bohrs Vej 9-10, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark
Leena Eklund Karlsson: Unit for Health Promotion Research, University of Southern Denmark, Niels Bohrs Vej 9-10, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark

Societies, 2017, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-16

Abstract: Children of imprisoned parents have a two times greater risk of health problems, including difficulties in their environment, academic and behavioural problems as well as social stigma. Focusing on children who have parents in prison has not been a priority for research. This review aims to describe current knowledge on children who have imprisoned parents in a global context and highlight areas for additional research. This review highlights the coping strategies that children of imprisoned parents use and explores interventions that exist to support children of imprisoned parents. This review employed a qualitative narrative synthesis. The database search yielded 1989 articles, of which 11 met inclusion and quality criteria. Stigmatizing children due to parental imprisonment was a widespread problem. Children’s coping strategies included maintaining distance from the imprisoned parent, normalizing the parent’s situation and taking better control over their lives through distraction, sports, supportive people and therapy. Children received the best support in school-based interventions or mentoring programmes. The overall low quality of the included studies indicates a need for further research.

Keywords: coping strategies; children; imprisoned parents; interventions; systematic review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/7/2/15/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/7/2/15/ (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:jsoctx:v:7:y:2017:i:2:p:15-:d:99483

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

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