A brief, telephone-administered CBT intervention developed for HSCT survivors is an efficacious treatment for reducing illness-related PTSD symptoms and general distress.

Peer helping through writing benefits transplant survivors with moderate-severe survivorship problems, but only if they have first completed expressive writing.

This study offers the first glimpse of the 12-month trajectory of HRQL following pediatric HSCT from mothers' perspectives. This study also highlights the importance of and approaches to addressing missing data in longitudinal research.

A subset of mothers of children who survive HSCT may require psychological intervention. Mothers who are most at risk are younger and evidence anxiety and depressive symptoms at the time of transplantation.

Objective Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a demanding cancer treatment associated with enduring physical and psychological complications. Survivors' well-being may be further compromised by exposure to chronic stressors common to this population, including difficulties arising from costly medical care, changes in employment status, and health insurance coverage. Thus, we hypothesized that financial, employment, and insurance stressors (collectively referred to as economic survivorship stressors) would be associated with poorer health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among HSCT survivors. Methods Survivors (n=181; M=640 days post-transplant) completed measures of study variables through mailed questionnaires and telephone interviews. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypothesized associations between economic survivorship stressors and HRQOL, and to examine whether social and situational factors interact with survivors' stress perceptions to predict HRQOL. Results Greater financial and employment stress were associated with poorer functioning across multiple HRQOL domains, even after controlling for the effects of possible confounding sociodemographic and medical variables. Insurance stress was not associated with HRQOL. Some associations were moderated by situational factors including timing of the current financial crisis and portion of the transplant paid for by health insurance. Conclusions HSCT survivors can face serious economic challenges during recovery. Results suggest the value of viewing these challenges as chronic stressors capable of reducing survivors' mental and physical well-being. Identifying resources and skills that help survivors cope with these demands is an important goal for clinicians and researchers.