Abstract
Parents of children recently diagnosed with cancer experience extreme emotional distress in response to uncertainty about their child's health. In response, some develop thoughts and behaviors that resemble symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PPTSD), for example, avoidance of illness reminders, hypervigilance, and sleep disturbances. The purpose of this study is to develop a cognitive-behavioral intervention that targets symptoms of PTSD in parents of children recently diagnosed with cancer. The intervention is expected to enhance parental self-management of childhood cancer by reducing symptoms of PTSD, and promoting suitable parental use of cancer-related medical and supportive care. The intervention will be an adaptation of the Coping Skills Training (CST) program (Davidson, Boland & Grey, 1997). It will focus on beliefs and situations that heighten parental uncertainty, common responses to uncertainty, and development of skills to manage responses to uncertainty and promote disease self-management. First, the CST program will be revised for use with parents of children with cancer. The second step will be a one group pre-test post-test design feasibility study of the revised CST program with parents of children recently diagnosed with cancer. The results could provide evidence for the possibility of treating parental symptoms of PTSD early in the course of childhood cancer to limit both short-term distress and symptoms of PTSD, and the incidence of long-term disability. The results could also provide support for the transferability of the CST program from type-1 diabetes to cancer.
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