Using photovoice with children of addicted parents to integrate phenomenological and social reality.

Highlights • Photo-voice was effective in enabling a personal space to enhance developmental growth away from the family problem but in group context. • Photo-voice enabled expressing the secret and the negative feelings about parents addiction in a mediated self- regulated indirect way. • Photo-voice enabled to work simultaneously on both internal phenomenological reality, and external social reality. Abstract On a micro level, addiction of a parent has a long-term psychological impact on children’s social, developmental, cognitive and emotional levels. On a macro level, the energy required to bear the social shame of the parent's addiction and the need to keep the secret are also very difficult. Photovoice makes it possible to express both the inner experience through symbols and metaphors, and the social reality, through photographing surroundings at the same time. Within a group context this creates a shared-reality on multiple levels. This case study explores the central themes of a group of children of addicted parents using photovoice. The central themes were photovoice effectiveness in integrating internal developmental milestones and the external social reality of addiction. The intervention protocol and its rationale, as well as implications of the central themes will be outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]