Loneliness despite the presence of others – Adolescents' experiences of having a parent who becomes ill with cancer

Contributing to making the school a safe place for the child: School nurses’ perceptions of their assignment when caring for children having parents with serious physical illness

“…Children taking part in a support programme for children with a parent with cancer describe first feeling a bit frightened to talk on their own with professionals, as they did not know them (Bugge et al, 2008). This is in line with the experiences of children being offered support in conjunction with a parent's death, who declined the support as they did not want to talk to a stranger (Karlsson et al, 2013). Through her work at the school incorporating regular health visits, the school nurse is known to the children and thus might be easier for the child to talk to, compared with an unknown HCP at the hospital.…”

“…The school nurses in the present study describe themselves as competent and prepared to care for children whose parent has a serious illness. Based on children's wish to talk to a HCP about their parent's illness (Karlsson, Andersson, & Ahlström, ; Patterson, Pearce, & Slawitschka, ) and to be treated normally at the school (Huang et al., ; Kristjanson et al., ) this shows that school nurses can support children based on their professional knowledge and experience of encountering children. Furthermore, school nurses have a natural way of contacting children as they are situated in the school and as part of the school health team they have an impact on the child's school situation and can thus tailor it according to the child's own wishes (Socialstyrelsen, ).…”

Teenagers' reasoning about a parent's recent death in cancer

“…One way to understand the feeling of relief in connection with and shortly after a parent's death is to highlight the death as involving a series of events that occur before and after death rather than as the singular stressful event (Patterson & Rangganadhan, 2010). Accumulation of these stressful events—witnessing and trying to understand and interpret the consequences of a parent's intensive treatments and progressively deteriorating health, confronting the fear of losing a parent, changes in family life, and feelings of loneliness (Karlsson et al, 2013; Melcher et al, 2015)—makes for a very stressful situation. Related to recent improvements in oncological treatments, many cancer patients live for several years with their illness, and studies have found that the recurrence of parental cancer is associated with high levels of distress in teenagers (Huizinga et al, 2005; 2011) .…”

“…A teenager losing a parent may experience several losses, starting at the time of diag-nosis: the loss of a healthy parent, the loss of both parents' emotional and physical availability, and the loss of normalcy in their own lives (Melcher et al, 2015;Phillips, 2014). This may lead to feelings of loneliness during their parent's illness (Melcher et al, 2015), which can linger for several years after the parent's death, stemming from a feeling of being alone in having these experiences and with no one else who could completely understand their situation (Karlsson et al, 2013). Studies suggest that teenagers experience more psychological distress than younger children dealing with parental cancer (Phillips, 2014), which may be related to teenagers having more developed cognitive and empathic abilities.…”

Communication in families with minor children following the loss of a parent to cancer

“…Bereaved children are more likely to adjust positively to the loss of a parent if the family shares thoughts and emotions openly (Howell et al, T 2016). Families who communicate openly about illness and express their emotions tend to have lower levels of depression and anxiety (Howell et al, 2015;Karlsson et al, 2013;Ponnet et al, 2013;Shapiro et al, 2014). Sveen, Kreicbergs, Melcher, and Alvariza (2015) found that teenagers who talked and grieved together with the surviving parent seemed to cope better after the loss than teenagers who did not.…”