Psychological outcomes and support in grandparents whose grandchildren suffer from a severe physical illness: A systematic review

OBJECTIVE: When a child is facing a severe physical illness, the entire family is affected. Grandparents provide invaluable emotional and practical support to families dealing with this situation, but little is known about the psychological impact on them. We aimed to synthesize the evidence on 1) the psychological outcomes experienced by grandparents when a grandchild is seriously ill and 2) the psychological support needed and used by grandparents. METHODS: We systematically searched four databases with the search terms “grandchild”, “grandparents”, “psychological outcomes” and “severe diseases”, and we used narrative synthesis to analyze the extracted data. RESULTS: Our search identified 3319 records of which 12 were included in the analysis. Grandparents reported experiencing a wide spectrum of feelings, with fear being the most prevalent feeling. Grandparents rarely accessed professional services due to their lack of knowledge about available programs or because of the absence of formal services addressing their needs. In consequence, grandparents asked and received informal support from other family members, friends or their church community. CONCLUSION: Grandparents need to be better informed about their grandchild's disease and the available support services in order to reduce their psychological burden and to better attend to the needs of the other family members.