Reactions of families to children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a particularly insidious neuromuscular disorder combining many of the psychologic stresses observed separately in other chronic diseases of children. It is a genetic disorder, transmitted as sex-linked recessive traits by a carrier mother to recipient son. Thus, mothers have the potential for guilt reactions, similar to those in the parents of hemophilic children1 and the reactions to impending death found in the parents of terminally ill leukemic children.2 Duchenne muscular dystrophy has a slow and arduous course, however, causing the strain of nonfatal chronic illnesses as well as many of the physical incapacities seen in diseases such as cerebral palsy.3