Page 213 - Encyclopedia of Nursing Research

180 n FAMILy HEALTH

Psychiatric nurses and related health pro- that helps to maintain health, offers support
fessionals should assist and partner with a to family members, affects health decisions,
F nonprofit voice like the National Alliance for and attaches meaning to illness (rolland,
the Mentally Ill to accelerate enhanced care 1987; Pardeck & yuen, 2001; Wright & Bell,
available to families and their ill members. 2009). The ability of families to meet their
primary functions rests, at least in part, on
Alice Kempe the health of individual family members. For
example, the state of family members’ physi-
cal and mental health determines how and if
family functions are met, such as the ability
Family health for employment, to consistently monitor the
behavior of children, and to provide a safe
environment. The health of the individuals
The importance of the family to the health of and the family is essential to effective fam-
the family, individual family members, and ily interactions and relationships. Grzywacz
communities is supported by the research and Ganong (2009) note that we determine
and scholarship across several decades the health of the family by how they respond
(Feetham, 2011). The family is described as to changes in the physical and mental health
the most important social context in which status of family members and how they func-
health and illness occur, illness is resolved, tion to prevent health problems.
and as the primary unit for health. Health The World Health Organization (WHO)
has been described as a criterion for fam- sponsored an initiative to identify statisti-
ily life and as one of the primary purposes cal indices of family and health by examin-
of the family (Grzywacz & Ganong, 2009). ing family research and policy across four
How the family is defined determines the approaches: demographic, epidemiological
factors that will be examined to evaluate the (medical), social, and economic. The WHO
health of individual family members and the was not able to identify specific indices of
family unit. However, no universal defini- family health because of the complexity
tion of family has been adopted by the legal of measurement and “that family health is
and social systems, family scientists, or the more than the sum of health of individual
clinical disciplines that work with or study family members” (WHO, 1976, p. 13) and
families. In addition to the biological family, therefore family health should apply to the
when examining health in the context of the sum of the states of health of the individual
family, the family can be defined as consti- family members. Pardeck and yuen (2001)
tuting a group of persons acting together to further reported that family health is demon-
perform functions required for the survival, strated by the development of, and continu-
growth, safety, socialization, and health of ous interaction among, the physical, mental,
the family members. research on health has emotional, social, economic, cultural, and
focused primarily at the level of the individ- spiritual dimensions of the family, which
ual and has not addressed the interdepen- results in the well-being of the family and its
dence between the health of the individual members. researchers and scholars have not
family members and the family (Feetham, been consistent in building from the WHO
1999, 2011). work and its definitions, therefore limiting
The health of the family and family mem- the contributions of the research of families
bers is considered a function of the family as in the ensuing decades (Feetham, 2011).
is biological reproduction, emotional devel- Factors influencing family health include
opment, socialization, safety, and economic (a) genetics, (b) physiological and psycholog-
support. The family is a dynamic system ical responses of individual family members,