The psychological impact to psychological adjustment with cleft lip and palate : Psychological distress and coping strategy during CLP patient\u27s childhood and adolescence from their own narratives

In order to survey how the Japanese people with cleft lip and palate (CLP) live daily life in our country, semi-stuructured interviews were conducted at the outpatient clinic in Tohoku University Dental Hospital. Male Particiapants (N = 2) were recruited at the hosptal and they all had CLP and were well-adjusted. The results were as follows. One is that they had some psychological distress related to CLP, and if they got cleft-related informations enough to cope with difficult situations such as medical intervention, teasing, they could solve their problems by themselves. Another result was during their developmental stages, some life events such as entering school and medical interventions such as the time when the big operation was done, were very critial to their psychological adjustment. This survey was done as the priliminary study to find the situation of Japanese with CLP, so in order to set the developmental support model, further research should be conducted in the near future.