Children's perceptions of medical and psychological disorders in their peers

Abstract

Abstract Investigating children's perceptions of medical and psychological disorders is important as it increases our understanding of how children view themselves and others, and also facilitates the development of effective intervention strategies with this population. The present investigation examined how children viewed imaginery peers who were described as suffering from various forms of medical or psychological disorders. Four written vignettes were employed, each describing imaginary children who varied on dimensions of type of disorder (Medical/Psychological) and severity of the problem (Mild/Severe). Thirty‐four boys and girls, aged 9–13 years, read the four vignettes and completed a written questionnaire assessing their evaluations of each character in terms of diagnosis, etiology, prognosis, effective treatment strategies, and desirability of the described peer as a friend. The results indicated that children can discriminate between medical and psychological disorders in terms of the above factors. Interestingly, the data indicated that children viewed an acting‐out peer (i.e., the Mild‐Psychological vignette) as having more severe problems than an hallucinating child (i.e., the Severe‐Psychological vignette).