Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

In The Aftermath of Cancer: The Psychological Status of Adolescent Cancer Survivors and its Correlates

Carmina Castellano-Tejedor^1*, Marta Pérez-Campdepadrós¹, Lluis Capdevila^1,2 and Tomás Blasco-Blasco²

¹Department of Basic Psychology, University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

²Pediatric Oncological and Hematological Service. Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona, Spain

*Corresponding Author:

Carmina Castellano-Tejedor
Department of Basic Psychology
University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain
Tel: +34 933 55 6000
E-mail: ninacastej@yahoo.es

Received Date: November 25, 2015; Accepted Date: December 14, 2015; Published Date: December 21, 2015

Citation: Castellano-Tejedor C, Pérez-Campdepadrós M, Capdevila L, Blasco-Blasco T (2015) In The Aftermath of Cancer: The Psychological Status of Adolescent Cancer Survivors and its Correlates. J Child Adolesc Behav 3:262. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000262

Copyright: © 2015 Castellano-Tejedor C et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Objective: To assess the psychological status of adolescent cancer survivors and examined its associations with selected personal (coping, cancer-related distress) and familial factors (parents’ general stress, cancer-related distress). Method: Using a cross-sectional design, forty-one survivors (12-19 years) answered standardized measures to assess psychological well-being, mood and emotions and self-perception (KIDSCREEN-52), coping (ACS) and cancer-related distress (two numeric scales). Similarly, forty-one parents were assessed for general stress (PSS-14) and cancer-related distress (two numeric scales). Results: Mean scores for all KIDSCREEN psychological dimensions assessed were within normative values (50 ± 10). Regression analyses revealed two models with a range of explained variance between 17.3-31.1% for psychological well-being (F(2,37) = 5.070; p = 0.011) and mood and emotions (F(3,36) = 6.877; p = 0.001) respectively. Conclusion: This study provides tentative evidence that survivors’ psychological status is related to diverse personal and familial factors, especially those concerning adolescent mobilization of coping resources during hospitalization, and parental general stress in survivorship. Although psychological outcomes in survivorship appeared satisfactory compared to normative values; this study revealed that to facilitate positive psychological adaptation in the aftermath of cancer, psychosocial interventions aimed to enhance personal and family strengths to cope with the illness are needed throughout the process.

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