The prevalence of children affected by parental cancer and their use of specialized psychiatric services: The 1987 Finnish Birth Cohort study

Abstract

The studies reporting population-based estimates of the proportion of children with a parent suffering from cancer are very few. These children have been shown to suffer from psychological symptoms, but it is not known whether their use of psychiatric services is increased. Our study examined the prevalence of children affected by parental cancer at national level and whether these children use specialized psychiatric services more than their peers. The study is a retrospective population-based registry study. All 60,069 children born in Finland in 1987 were followed up with various health and social registers from 1987 to 2008. The associations of parental cancer treatments with children's psychiatric service use were analyzed with logistic regressions. During the 21-year follow-up 3,909 (6.6%) of the children had a parent suffering from cancer. The children of the cancer patients used more specialized psychiatric care than their peers and the service use depended on parent's gender, as well as cohort members' gender and the age at occurrence. The combination of parental cancer and psychiatric disorder, whether the ill parent or spouse, increased the children's psychiatric service use even more. Children affected by parental cancer comprise a substantial part of the population in society using increased level of psychiatric services. Parental cancer is clearly an illness which has to be taken into account in planning child-and parentingfocused prevention and promotion actions in adult health care. ''Parent's cancer is like a tsunami which rolls over the whole family. If it struck a thousand families at the same time the whole healthcare system would be mobilized. But when it strikes one family at a time you are left alone with your children'' (quote from a father during a family intervention). Weaver et al. 1 have reported that 14% of all cancer survivors in the USA have minor dependent children, representing a population of about 1.58 million survivors and 2.85 million children. A significant part of working age population is thus struggling with concerns related to serious illness, parenting and the wellbeing of children.

The Risk of Schizophrenia and Child Psychiatric Disorders in Offspring of Mothers with Lung Cancer and Other Types of Cancer: A Danish Nationwide Register Study

“…The findings could also reflect the fact that parents with lung cancer had a higher risk of dying than parents with other types of cancers [53]. Furthermore, the temporal association with paternal and not maternal cancer could be due to the apparently increased mortality associated with paternal cancer, which has been suggested by other studies [53,54]. …”

Parental cancer: Characteristics of users of child‐centred counselling versus individual psycho‐oncological treatment

“…Current international guidelines for oncological care explicitly recommend to involve the parental role of the patient and to involve minor children in supportive and psycho‐oncological care, if necessary . In Scandinavian countries, children of parents undergoing treatment should be considered routinely in healthcare clinical practice . Tailored support can help cancer patients during the course of the disease to reduce emotional distress and to enhance their QoL .…”

Use and need for psychosocial support in cancer patients

“…Multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that family-centered support use can be predicted by the [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. f According to the SF-8 Health Survey (range, 0-100).…”