No abstract

The study evaluated the psychosocial functioning levels of a group of chronically ill (diabetic, asthmatic, cystic fibrotic, and hearing-impaired) children across a battery of standardized personality instruments. The assessments were performed to provide a rigorous test of the popular hypothesis that chronically ill children are especially vulnerable to psychopatholgy. In contrast to this sterotype, results across measures demonstrated the normalcy rather than the deviance of these children. Although exceptions were noted, the children's functional strengths and coping abilities noticeably outweighed their weaknesses.

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Introduction IN a recent communication (Slater, 1943), based on a statistical survey of two thousand neurotic soldiers, a hypothesis was developed to the effect that there was a generalized predisposition towards neurosis, which was in large part responsible for the appearance of neurotic symptoms in the individual when placed under stress. Evidence was adduced that this constitutional tendency, though it might be affected by such environmental factors as early processes of conditioning, was, at least in part, dependent on hereditary factors. Evidence was also brought that it could usefully be considered in a quantitative manner, and that so considered the intensity of the constitutional predisposition varied inversely with the degree of stress under which the individual was placed before breakdown occurred, i.e. the greater the intensity of the constitutional predisposition, the less was the degree of stress required to produce breakdown, and vice versa.