PSYCHOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENT AMONG PEDIATRIC CANCER SURVIVORS

Abstract

SUMMARY: A significant number of children who survive pediatric cancer experience residual psychosocial sequelae. The most noteworthy of these include residual depression, anxiety, and poor self‐esteem. As a group, those patients who have the most difficulty in psychosocial adjustment also have less effective socialization and self‐help skills and less effective intellectual functioning than do those patients who have “Good Adjustment”. The developmental disruptions engendered by cancer treatment seem more marked and persistent when occurring in middle childhood or adolescence as opposed to during infancy. As one gets further in time from the onset of the illness, one is less likely to suffer psychosocial adjustment problems (assuming that a disease‐free remission state exists and that active treatment is no longer in progress). A number of important factors remain to be explored, including psychosocial adjustment as a function of residual physical disfigurement, mobility handicaps, and similar potential blows to a patient's sell‐esteem.