The Contextual Model Of Family Stress

I have seen many families cope with stress in a variety of ways, however one particular event of severe dysfunctional coping comes to mind. I had a patient whose spouse had a very traumatic childhood and struggled with stress management all their life. They had never been a drinker, but once their spouse was diagnosed with cancer they turned to alcohol to cope and would binge drink and just cry for days. This pattern of behavior lasted for months and their inability to cope with the stress affected the whole family. The patient who was diagnosed with cancer found that they were more stressed out and overwhelmed by their spouse’s alcohol use and dependence, then they were over their cancer diagnosis. This particular patient felt very angry and resentful towards their spouse, because of their behavior and the fact that they weren’t allowed to be sad about their disease. The spouse’s alcoholism wound up driving a wedge between this couple and I am not sure if their marriage will survive. According to Friedman et al., (2003) families that struggle with binge …show more content…
The Contextual Model of Family Stress developed by Boss (2002), breaks down how certain events led up to the degree of stress that occurred within the family unit (Bomar, 2004, p. 377). According to Bomar (2004), the letter A is represents the stressor, B interacts with A and is representative of the family’s resources, which interrelates with C the families perceived thoughts and meaning of the event, thus leading to X which represents the degree of stress the family has encountered (p.377). All four components react to one another producing the families’ level of stress and therefore affecting their ability to cope. According to Bomar (2004) families are affected by both the external and internal context and many times the stressor stems from an imbalance in one of these areas