A Review of Supportive Care Interventions to Manage Distress in Young Children With Cancer and Parents :

To guide assessment and intervention for patients and families, a model for assessing and treating pediatric medical traumatic stress (PMTS) is presented that integrates the literature across pediatric conditions. A model with three general phases is outlined--I, peritrauma; II, early, ongoing, and evolving responses; and III, longer-term PMTS. Relevant literature for each is reviewed and discussed with respect to implications for intervention for patients and families. Commonalities across conditions, the range of normative responses to potentially traumatic events (PTEs), the importance of preexisting psychological well-being, developmental considerations, and a social ecological orientation are highlighted. Growing empirical support exists to guide the development of assessment and intervention related to PMTS for patients with pediatric illness and their parents. The need for interventions across the course of pediatric illness and injury that target patients, families, and/or healthcare teams is apparent. The model provides a basis for further development of evidence-based treatments.

This study used meta-analytic methods to compare the functioning of parents of children with cancer to parents of physically healthy children or normative samples. A meta-analysis using fixed effects, weighted least squares methods was conducted on 29 studies examining psychological distress and marital and family functioning among parents of children with cancer. Mothers and fathers of children newly diagnosed with cancer reported significantly greater distress than comparison samples. Mothers reported greater distress than fathers up to 12 months postdiagnosis. Mothers of children with cancer reported higher levels of family conflict than mothers of healthy children. Findings suggest that pediatric cancer impacts parents' perceptions of self- and family functioning, especially within the 1st year following diagnosis. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved