The psychosocial development of children and adolescents with severe burn injuries and their parents.

A severe burn injury is one of the most traumatic, dehumanising injuries and individual can experience. Burns frequently induce both psychiatric sequelae and serious physical deformities. Burn injuries often lead to significant psychological trauma with paediatricpatients. To improve further inpatient and outpatient treatment, it is important to outline the psychological factors that influence the emotions, cognitions, and behaviours of children and adolescents with burn injuries.

Two years after hospitalisation, paediatric patients and their families will be invited to participate to a yearly follow-up program of family-centered care in the outpatient burn centre - Greet Rouffaer Huis. In addition, the participants will be questioned about different development aspects (emotions, cognitions, motor skills, self-esteem and prosocial behaviour), the parental feeling of competence and the quality of the parent-child relationship.

This research will try to find out which coping skills children, adolescents and their familiesdevelop after severe burn injuries. Knowledge generatedfrom this research, together with the research findings from the studies onthe effects of burn camps and the influence of thermal cures on burn-injured children, should lead to a better after-care cure course.