Adolescent and young adult cancer survivors perceived a better quality of life than controls, especially those treated for haematological disorders or with a shorter off-treatment period. Future studies should aim to understand better this positive self-reported phenomenon, as well as investigating post-traumatic growth using qualitative narratives. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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A better knowledge of parents' views and expectations regarding their children's HRQL during the first treatments for pediatric leukemia may facilitate the communication processes in the hospital and may help to provide improved psychosocial care for the child during the first treatments for leukemia.

This study explores parental ethnotheories of children's temperament through mothers' responses to McDevitt and Carey's Behavioral Style Questionnaire (1978) for 299 children aged 3 to 8 years and interviews with their parents, in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. We first established a standardized, “derived etic” version of the questionnaire with adequate reliability for 8 of the original 9 scales. Cross-cultural comparisons of the scales' means showed generally similar perceptions of children's behavior. However, intercorrelations of the mean ratings with each other and with global “difficulty,” as presented through multidimensional scaling, showed both general tendencies and culture-specific patterns, which are further illustrated by parental discourse about “difficult” children in each sample. The findings underline the importance of parental ethnotheories for shaping the expression of temperament in development.

With modern therapies and supportive care, survival rates of childhood cancer have increased considerably. However, there are long-term psychological sequelae of these treatments that may not manifest until pediatric survivors are into adulthood. The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in young adult survivors of childhood cancer ranges from 6.2 to 22%; associated risk factors are young age at the assessment, female gender, low education level, and some disease-related factors. The aim of this study was to investigate, in adolescent and young adult (AYA) survivors of childhood cancer, the incidence and severity of post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs), and to identify the risk factors and the associated post-traumatic growth (PTG) index. Participants were 223 AYA cancer survivors recruited during follow-up visits in the Oncohematology Clinic of the Department of Child and Woman’s Health, University of Padua. Data were collected from self-report questionnaires on PTSS incidence, PTG mean score, perceived social support, and medical and socio-demographic factors. Ex-patients’ mean age at the assessment was 19.33 years (SD = 3.01, 15–25), 123 males and 100 females, with a mean of years off-therapy of 9.64 (SD = 4.17). Most (52.5%) had survived an hematological disorder and 47.5% a solid tumor when they were aged, on average, 8.02 years (SD = 4.40). The main results indicated a moderate presence of clinical (≥9 symptoms: 9.4%) and sub-clinical PTSS (6–8 symptoms: 11.2%), with the avoidance criterion most often encountered. Re-experience symptoms and PTG mean score were significantly associated (r = 0.24; p = 0.0001). A hierarchical regression model (R2 = 0.08; F = 1.46; p = 0.05) identified female gender (β = 0.16; p = 0.05) and less perceived social support (β = -0.43; p = 0.05) as risk factors to developing PTSS. Another hierarchical regression model assessed the possible predictors of the PTG total score (R2 = 0.36; F = 9.1; p = 0.0001), with female gender (β = 0.13; p = 0.04), actual age (β = 0.52; p = 0.0001), younger age at the diagnosis (β = -0.3; p = 0.02), and less years off-therapy (β = -0.58; p = 0.0001) impacting on PTG.