Concepts of death, illness and isolation found in children with leukaemia.

In 1985 Lansdown and Benjamin published a study on the development of the concept of death in healthy children. The study reported here uses the same methodology but reports on the concepts of death of 21 children with leukaemia between 4 and 9 years of age. The leukaemic children's conceptual development was not overall significantly different from that of the healthy children although there were some differences in content. Two further areas were studied. The first was children's ideas about the causes of illness, in which the widely postulated notion of immanent justice was not found to be common. The second was an analysis of drawings of children's families which suggested that sick children perceive themselves to be isolated in hospital.