Self-reported psychosocial wellbeing of adolescent childhood cancer survivors.

PURPOSE

To describe self-reported psychosocial wellbeing of adolescent childhood cancer survivors (CCS) compared with a control group of their peers.

METHODS

In this case-control study, 170 CCS aged 12-18 years completed an internet survey. The survey was a modified version of the Youth'07 Health and Wellbeing Survey of Secondary School Students in New Zealand. The control group (historical comparison) were the 9107 Youth'07 survey participants. Psychosocial wellbeing was assessed by measures of a) wellbeing (WHO-5), b) anxiety (MASC-10), c) depression (RADS2-SF) and d) emotional and behavioural difficulties (SDQ).

RESULTS

The majority of CCS scored within the normal range across all four measures: wellbeing (89%), anxiety (93%), depression (94%) and emotional and behavioural difficulties (82%), leaving a small but important minority of CCS reporting significant clinical issues. Compared to their peers, adolescent CCS were no more likely to have an abnormal score for any of the psychosocial measures, and less likely to report abnormal psychosocial wellbeing (OR = 0.44, p = 0.0003) and prosocial behaviour problems (OR = 0.53, p = 0.009). Survivors of central nervous system tumours, older age, older age at diagnosis, and lower socioeconomic status were associated with some psychosocial difficulty.

CONCLUSIONS

Following a diagnosis of childhood cancer, intensive therapy, and the subsequent risk of adverse health outcomes, one might expect CCS to be doing less well than their peers in terms of psychosocial wellbeing. The findings of this study, however, show that CCS are doing as well, and in some respects better, than their peers.