Background. Children undergoing cancer treatment face a number of emotional, physical, and other problems leading to distress that need to be identified in a timely fashion. Regular assessment of patients' and their caregivers' psychosocial health care needs during the patients' hospital stays has become the standard of psychological care. Objective. This study was conducted to determine the validity of the Distress Rating Scale (DRS) on a Russian pediatric sample. The DRS appeared to be a reliable pediatric measure of patients' distress level. Design. One hundred fifty-nine (159) children of ages 7-17 with cancer and blood disorders, 153 caregivers, and 51 physicians were included in our study. Forty-five families were reassessed as a test-retest group after a four-week interval. The DRS was validated through the use of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) by M. Kovacs and by the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL 4.0). Results. The convergent validity of the DRS's Russian version was shown by the reasonable agreement between the children's distress level and standardized measure scores. The criterion validity was demonstrated by significant correlations between the children's DRS self-reports, and those of their parents and physicians. The robustness and consistency of the results in the primary and repeated assessments between the DRS, the CDI, and the PedsQL, proved the reliability of the scale. Age-specific cutoff scores were determined. Conclusion. The Russian version of the DRS is a valid tool for rapid and reliable assessment of children's emotional distress in order to identify their needs for psychological assistance in a timely manner.
The work aims to study emotional distress, the need for information about the disease and treatment, and the need for psychological assistance in adolescents undergoing inpatient treatment for oncological and oncohematological diseases. The paper presents research materials on a sample of patients aged 12—18 (N=28, 12 boys, 16 girls) and their mothers. We used distress scales for children (a version suitable for respondents aged 7—17) and parents with a modified Problem List, and questionnaires for doctors in the chemotherapy department. The results obtained indicate the severity of emotional distress, subjectively significant difficulties, the need for medical information and psychological assistance in patients and parents. Clinically significant distress was detected in 62.8% of adolescents and 64.4% of mothers. No association was found between reports of needs for information, psychological assistance, and overall distress scores in either adolescents or their mothers. Thus, it has been shown that when assessing the adolescent’s need for information and psychological assistance, it is advisable to focus not on the general dis tress score, but on the representation of difficulties associated with treatment, as well as on the adolescent’s own opinion about the presence of these needs. The inclusion in the Problem List of the distress scales of those subjectively significant difficulties that reflect the developmental characteristics of the patients and the specifics of the type of treatment, as well as the introduction of direct questions about the needs for information and psychological assistance, expands the possibilities of identifying adolescents in need of psychological support undergoing inpatient chemotherapy and facilitates their collaboration with the clinic’s multidisciplinary team of specialists.
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