Psychological problems following recovery from acute life-threatening illness.

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Abstract
Counseling of a group of families in which a child had been stricken with a sudden, life-threatening illness is described. Although all children made good medical recoveries, family adjustment problems were marked; incomplete mourning, sense of helplessness and lack of control, and fantasies of death and return on the part of children and of parents were noted. Strategies for helping families cope with this variant of the vulnerable child syndrome are discussed.