Posttraumatic distress in childhood cancer survivors and their parents

Emotional functioning of parents of children with cancer: the first five years of continuous remission after the end of treatment

“…Firstly, the present study focused on a limited number of outcomes, namely psychological distress and situation-specific emotional reactions. Other interesting aspects indicative of parental emotional (mal)adjustment, such as post-traumatic stress symptoms, could also be taken into account [6,22,[46][47][48]. Secondly, we assessed neither previous parental emotional functioning (such as a history of psychiatric problems) nor socio-economic variables (such as income and employment)}factors that have been shown in previous studies to have an impact on parental functioning [14,17].…”

“…Parental levels of distress and disease-related negative feelings returned to normal levels in the first two years after the completion of treatment. This finding is not in line with the results of most other studies, in which elevated levels of distress were found during the first years after the end of treatment [3,4,6,22,27,[45][46][47][48]. It should be realized that the favourable outcomes presented in the VOLG study could not be extrapolated to the parents of children who suffered a relapse.…”

Persistent psychological distress in long-term survivors of pediatric sarcoma: the experience at a single institution

“…Several studies suggest that childhood cancer survivors are at increased risk for maladaptive psychosocial sequalae (Koocher and O'Malley, 1981) including depression (Fritz et al, 1988;Mulhern et al, 1989), behavioral adjustment problems (Moore et al, 1987;Fritz et al, 1988;Mulhern et al, 1989;Madan-Swain and Brown, 1991), and anxiety (Zebrack and Chesler, 2002;Pendley et al, 1997;Neff and Beardslee, 1990), while others report that a significant portion of childhood cancer survivors have no higher prevalence of anxiety (Schmale et al, 1983), depression (Greenberg et al, 1989;Ross et al, 2003), overall mood disorder (Gray et al, 1992), or lowered self-concept (Anholt et al, 1993) when compared with population norms or matched controls. Moreover, a number of studies suggest that childhood cancer survivors are well-or better-adjusted compared to normative groups (Fritz et al, 1988;Barakat et al, 1997;Kazak, 1998;Cella and Tross, 1986;Kupst et al, 1995;Chesler and Zebrack, 1997). No clear pattern can sufficiently explain these disparities (Elkin, 1997) although methodological differences including sampling method, outcome variables measured, and method of survey administration as well as varied types of malignancies, treatments, and age groups have to be taken into consideration.…”

“…Stuber et al (1996) found that more than half of their sample of childhood cancer survivors reported posttrauma symptoms including bad dreams and feeling afraid or upset when thinking about cancer. A series of reports has documented PTSS and/or PTSD in mothers of childhood cancer survivors Brown et al, 2003;Kazak et al, 1997Kazak et al, , 1998Kazak et al, , 2004Manne et al, 1998Manne et al, , 2002Pelcovitz et al, 1996) as well as in their fathers and siblings (Alderfer et al, 2003).…”

Educational and social late effects of childhood cancer and related clinical, personal, and familial characteristics

“…adjustment [25][26][27][28][29][30] also have been assessed in childhood cancer survivors; and, although the results have been inconsistent, poorer outcomes for survivors generally are reported. In our own work, poorer physical and psychosocial quality of life was reported in survivors of childhood cancer who still were children and adolescents when they were studied compared with their age-matched and gender-matched counterparts from the general population.…”