Groningen University. Netherlands: Children with cancer adapt to the consequences of their illness extremely well. They are less pessimistic than their healthy peers, adjust difficult goals and focus on the positive aspects of being ill. This process starts during the first months after the diagnosis. These are among the conclusions from research conducted by paediatric nurse and pedagoge Esther Sulkers from the University Medical Center Groningen. Parents also adjust quickly to the new care tasks they face. Sulkers will be awarded a PhD for her thesis by the University of Groningen on 4 February. Very few children with cancer, or their parents, have psychological problems dealing with the disease. This is despite the far-reaching consequences of the diagnosis and treatment for both child and parent. But little is known about why children are so resilient. Esther Sulkers explored the factors underlying this resilience. She focused on the coping mechanisms that children develop during the first year after the diagnosis, and the progress of care-related stress among parents.
Less pessimistic than their peers
Sulkers’ research showed that children with cancer
are less pessimistic than their healthy peers. They do not necessarily
expect more good things to happen, but they tend to focus less on the
things that could go wrong in the future. This relatively low degree of
pessimism could explain why this group has so few psychological
problems.
Adjusting personal goals
Diagnosis and treatment can drastically change a
child’s life and often have an adverse effect on their well-being.
Sulkers shows that these children are able to adjust their personal
goals to suit their current situation. They do this by ‘parking’ their
goals or setting new, more feasible goals. In addition, they aspire to
more intrinsic goals than their peers, and consider them more important.
The goals of children with cancer are generally more concrete than
those of their healthy counterparts, and do not change during the first
year after the diagnosis.
Positive experiences
According to Sulkers’ research, young cancer patients
attribute positive experiences in their lives to having cancer. All the
children were able to name at least one such positive experience within
six months of the diagnosis. These included ‘knowing who my best
friends are’, ‘knowing how much people love me’ and ‘being happy and
enjoying the good things in life’. These experiences were still evident
six months later.
Parental stress
Sulkers also included the parents of childhood cancer
patients in her study. It would seem that although the new care-related
tasks initially cause them stress, this feeling recedes during the
first three months after the diagnosis. Single mothers and mothers of
only children experience the most stress.
Starting points for counselling
According to Sulkers, the swift development of coping
mechanisms explain why children with cancer and their parents are so
resilient. Sulkers: ‘This provides a good starting point for counselling
those children and parents who are coping less well’. She would like to
see more research into the precise impact that the underlying
mechanisms have on the adjustment process.
Curriculum Vitae
E. Sulkers (1962, Delft) studied Orthopedagogy at the
University of Groningen. She carried out her research at the Research
Institute SHARE and the Department of Child Oncology in the UMCG. Her
thesis is entitled: ‘Psychological adaptation to childhood cancer:
underlying mechanisms’. Sulkers will continue her work as a researcher
in the UMCG after obtaining her PhD.
Source: press release UMCG