Thalassemy Major is a chronic disease with an early beginning. The progressive improvement in diagnostic and therapeutic approach has changed the prognosis and raised the quality of life in such patients. The higher chance of surviving has disclosed new relational problems inside and outside the family. Among the most frequent: the sense of fault, the dependence on blood transfusions for survival, the threat of imminent death, the difficulty in leaving the family and the reduced compliance in teen-agers.

The aim of this signal is the methodology employed for the members of six families of thalassemical patients. In order to increase the social sense of the family, the relationship between patient and family, the compliance and especially the fight against stress, we decided to create a group of thalassemic people. They were all invited to fill in a semi-structured questionnaire, with an interview for every family, in order to value and estimate the existence and the modification of the examined factors of risk and protection.

The first results, revealed phenomenological, have showed great improvement in social and interpersonal communication, an availability to opening, outside the family, an interesting and steady increase in interpersonal relations inside the family and about the compliance from parents and patients.

A greater skill in coping with stressing events on emotional plane has been seen during the mourning elaboration for the AIDS death of a child attending our group and for the emotional relations of a young boy to a paralysis caused by a thrombosis.

The results are still being worked out but the first clinical considerations put special emphasis on this group technique, especially as far as the close relation between the young patient and his doctor is concerned.

Key words: Thalassemy Major, relational problems, group of thalassemic people, semi-structured questionnaire, factors of protection.