ABSTRACT
For many parents the possibility of giving the treatment for their child’s illness comes as the first shaft of hope in the gloom of despair following the diagnosis. Treatment is seen as a means of potentiating the child’s existence and undertaken as a challenge. Involvement in the treatment, necessitating, as it does, activity on the parents’ part, can also be of use in helping parents to forget some of their otherwise overwhelming anxiety. Most usually it is the mother who shoulders the burden of treatment. Perhaps the most tragic problem concerning treatment is the problem of finally withholding it. From the child’s viewpoint, treatment procedures frequently have a punitive colouring, for example, those requiring bedrest or immobilisation, the swallowing of unpleasant substances or the limitation of food intake. It is not surprising therefore that some children develop consequent ‘fantasies of being unloved, different, singled out’.
