The perception of the child/adolescent with cerebral paralysis on feeling healthy or ill

Abstract

Aim: to understand how the child/adolescent with cerebral palsy lives and understands his/her own health and disease process. Method: qualitative research, with phenomenological hermeneutic approach, in the south of Brazil, with eleven children/adolescents with cerebral palsy, from October 2011 to June 2012. The information was collected through phenomenological interviews, analyzed through the hermeneutic approach. Results: the children/adolescents with cerebral palsy understand health as synonym of happiness, emphasizing that the disease is a depriving phenomenon, which interferes with their way of being in everyday activities. However, even with all deprivation, participants perceive themselves as healthy. Final considerations: the children/adolescents reveal themselves as a being-in-the-world with a body image that gives them pleasure, with moral and ethical values. The formation of this positive self-image is influenced by the perspective created by the family in the visualization of becoming- child/adolescent with cerebral palsy.