Japanese Family Conditions Demonstrating Family Resilience: Directed Content Analysis Based on Literature and Family Interviews

Background/Objectives: When experiencing a variety of negative family events, families that, as a whole, have high family resilience maintain and improve family functioning. It is important, therefore, for nursing professionals to be able to assess families lacking in family resilience in order to prevent, reduce, or ameliorate family symptoms (such as family-perceived problems, issues, difficulties, or suffering). The purpose of this study was to clarify how family resilience works. Methods: Family resilience is defined based on the Concentric Sphere Family Environment Theory (CSFET) as when a family becomes aware of family symptoms on its own, and its power to autonomously and actively improve its own family functions. The contents of 22 family nursing cases from 16 qualitative studies on family resilience and the results of 28 semi-structured interviews with 28 parenting-age families in Japan were qualitatively categorized using the triangulation method, and then directed content analysis was conducted based on the CSFET. Results: A total of 157 labels, with a total of 23 categories and 47 subcategories, were found to relate to family resilience, such as “can utilize relatives”, “family members can communicate with members of other families”, “family members can share information”, “all family members can communicate with one another”, “all family members can cooperate with one another”, and “can share time with family”. Conclusions: From these, a variety of diverse aspects contributing to a family’s resilience, including family member interactions, entire family interactions, use of social resources, and religious and spiritual support, were indicated.