Research On Protective Factors In Five Resilient Women Who Grew Up With A Parent Suffering From Bipolar Disorders

Helene Tang (1) , Evelyne Bouteyre Verdier (1)

1 LPCLS - Laboratoire de Psychopathologie Clinique, Langage et Subjectivité

This study aims at exploring internal and external protective factors in resilient subjects, who lived with a parent suffering from a mental illness, using the analysis of the family drawing and the semi-structured interview. Five mental healthy adult women, from 20 to 43 years old, who lived with a father or a mother with bipolar disorders, have participated in the study. Family drawing when they lived with both parents whose one was mentally ill, was used in case of participants. In the family drawings, among the internal protective factors, three of the five subjects showed a character strength and a good emotional maturity. The two others showed either inhibition or introversion as defence mechanisms. Among the external protective factors, we observed a closer relationship with the healthy than the mentally ill parent in two of the five drawings, a closer relationship with a sibling than the parents in two other drawings. These results corroborate the protective factors reported in the semi-structured interviews and were the most predominant. These results are congruent with those in the literature. Thus, the family drawing is a relevant and original tool given its projective feature to investigate and evaluate the weight of the protective factors in the offspring of mentally ill parents.

Mots clés: protective factors; resilience; adult offspring of parent with bipolar disorders; family drawing

Domaines: Psychologie

Helene Tang, Evelyne Bouteyre Verdier. Research On Protective Factors In Five Resilient Women Who Grew Up With A Parent Suffering From Bipolar Disorders. Serban Ionescu; Mihaela Tomita; Sorin Cace. The second world congress on resilience : from person to society, Pianoro : Médimont, 2014. ⟨hal-01435798⟩