Gaining More Ease in Everyday Life as a Family With a Child With Intellectual Disability Through Family-Systemic Therapeutic Conversations: An Exploratory Single-Case Study

This study aimed to learn how a sequence of family-systemic therapeutic conversations created a context to respond to the challenges and needs of a family raising a child with intellectual disability. The data for this qualitative, exploratory, longitudinal single-case study were collected at a Swiss Family Systems Care Unit. The three therapeutic conversations conducted with a single mother of an adolescent with intellectual disability were analyzed using summarizing and explicative content analysis on the within-data source level and structuring content analysis on the across-and-between data source level. The main category, “gaining more ease by modeling burdens and suffering,” refers to a better balance of the woman’s challenges cumulating to deep suffering. Six subcategories detail the challenges, needs, interventions, and effects. Therapeutic conversations in families with multiple severe vulnerabilities are supportive. The study was written according to the Standards of Reporting Qualitative Research and the Methodological Framework for Organizational Case Studies.