Review of Coping strategies for burn survivors and their families.

Abstract

Coping Strategies for Burn Survivors and Their Families represents the combined efforts of professionals and burn survivors to produce a manual that can provide encouragement and guidance to people who have sustained trauma of this nature. The book is edited by Norman Bernstein (a psychiatrist), Alan J. Breslau (burn survivor and founder of the Phoenix Society), and Jean Ann Graham (a psychologist specializing in cosmetic therapy for the disfigured). The editors, who have accumulated a substantial amount of professional and personal ex-perience in treating the survivors of major burns, each contribute chapters of their own. In addition, chapters are contributed by 16 other writers, nine of whom are professionals working in the area of burn care or cosmetic remediation of disfigurement, and seven of whom are actual survivors (or parents of survivors) of burns. The specific content of the chapters focuses on coping with disfigurement, emotional responses, interpersonal relations, employment strategies, sexuality (five chapters), cosmetic treatments, wigs and hairpieces, maxillo-facial prosthetics, and parental responses of patients with burns.As can be seen from the content of the 19 chapters, the reader is exposed to a variety of writers, subjects, and personal points of view. A potential benefit of this approach is that the likelihood that the reader will find an experience or subject matter that touches upon his or her own will be increased. The quality of the chapters tends to vary, and it is difficult to determine how burn survivors will respond to any one of them.We were impressed by E. David Warner's chapter on employment strategies, which offered optimistic, clearly written, sagacious advice to those hoping to return to work after burn hospitalization. We were also encouraged to discover the degree of attention the authors gave to sexuality -an issue of burn adjustment that has been seriously neglected in the literature. A broad definition of sexuality is provided in these chapters, which is important in helping the reader understand that this term encompasses far more than intercourse. However, so little emphasis is placed on such subjects as the sexual response cycle, erogenous touching, and fertility that we feared that the readers might perceive they could no longer resume participation in these realms of sexuality. In general, the chapters are clearly titled so that the burn survivor can thumb through the book and pick and choose those that may have some personal relevance.We had some concerns as to how some burn survivors might react to the first two chapters. Largely theoretical in nature, these chapters focus on the impact that attractiveness and disfigurement have on one's functioning in society. Over and over again, the reader is told that physical attractiveness is important in our culture and that disfigurement disrupts a person's functional capacity in a variety of areas. Towards the end of each of these two chapters, the writers provide suggestions for coping; however, their advice pales in co...