Reactions of Adolescents to Their Therapist’s Serious Illness

Few publications exist on the reactions of children and adolescents to the serious illness of their therapist. This paper
reviews the literature on the responses of adult patient’s and presents three vignettes of adolescents who were in treatment
when their therapist was diagnosed with cancer. We discuss some of the theoretical and clinical issues these cases present
and conclude that openly sharing an appropriate amount of information with the adolescents appears to further rather than
impede the therapeutic process.