The Kinetic Family Drawing with Donor and Nondonor Siblings of Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Patients

Abstract

Although bone marrow transplantation (BMT) has become standard therapy for many life-threatening disorders of childhood, there is little research on the psychosocial impact of BMT on family members. Parents have expressed particular concern about the psychosocial effects on siblings. We recently found in a cohort of donor and nondonor siblings that donors had significantly more anxiety, lower self-esteem, and more adaptive skills in school than nondonors; nondonors showed significantly more school problems. In our investigation, we used the Kinetic Family Drawing-Revised (KFD-R) (Spinetta, McLaren, Fox, & Sparta, 1981) to measure siblings' feelings and attitudes toward BMT. We report findings from the KFD-R with siblings (n = 44, ages 6-18 years) of surviving pediatric BMT patients, including data from case studies of three siblings. Data from the drawings and discussions with siblings underscore that not all children are affected by stress in the same way. How a particular child responds depends on factors such as life history, personality, resilience, and family support.