Comparison of mother's anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms and mental adjustment in children hospitalized with and without leukemia

Leukemia is a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow that is the most common cause of cancer in children. Parents of hospitalized children with cancer will experience serious psychological problems. This research was done to compare parent’s anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms and mental adjustment in children hospitalized with and without cancer.
The method of study was causal-comparison. The population was hospitalized children with leukemia in Baghiatollah and Mofid hospitals and their mothers. In addition to children without cancer, children who were hospitalized in emergency unit were also studied. In these populations, 30 children with cancer and 30 children without cancer and their mothers were selected with available sampling. The mothers of two groups of children responded the State-trait anxiety questionnaire, Impact of Event Scale – Revised and the post hospital behavior questionnaire. Data was analyzed with multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA).
Findings indicate that mothers of children with cancer as compared to mothers of children without cancer had higher levels of post-traumatic stress symptoms. Also, mental adjustment of children with cancer was less than children without cancer. The mothers of the two groups in state-trait anxiety had not a significant difference.
The early identification of parents at risk for post-traumatic stress symptoms suggests that pediatric health care providers in the hospital should ask parents and their children about these symptoms and when these symptoms exist, necessary social-psychological interventions provide for them.