Parental stress when caring for a child with cancer in Jordan: a cross-sectional survey

Health and Quality of Life Outcomes

Carol Hall²  Jacqueline Collier¹  Rami Masa’Deh³ 

[1] School of Allied Health Professions, University of East Anglia, Queen's Building, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK;University of Nottingham, School of Nursing, Midwifery & Physiotherapy, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, NG7 2HA, UK;School of Nursing, Midwifery & Physiotherapy, University of Nottingham, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, NG7 2HA, UK

关键词: Fathers;    Mothers;    Caregivers;    Stress;    Cancer;    Children;    Parents;   

Others  :  825338
DOI  :  10.1186/1477-7525-10-88

 received in 2012-02-24, accepted in 2012-07-16,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

Most studies report that being parents of a child with cancer is a stressful experience, but these have tended to focus on mothers and few have included both parents. Moreover, studies have focussed on families in Western countries and none have been published examining the psychological outcomes for parents living in an Arabic country.

This research explores the stress levels of Jordanian parents caring for a child with cancer in order to identify the psychological needs of parents in this environment and to explore how mothers and fathers stress levels might differ.

Methods

The study was carried out in Jordan using the Perceived Stress Scale 10-items (PSS10). The questionnaire was completed by 300 couples with a child who has cancer and a comparison group of 528 couples where the children do not have any serious illness. Multivariate backward regression analysis was carried out.

Results

Analysis adjusting for spousal stress and sociodemographic predictors revealed that stress levels of mothers with a child who had cancer remained significantly higher than mothers whose children did not have any serious illness (p < 0.001). However, having a child with cancer did not show a significant association with the fathers’ reported stress scores (p = 0.476) when spousal stress was in the model, but was highly significant once that was removed (p < 0.001).

Parental stress was analysed for those with a child who has cancer and in models which included spouse’s stress scores, sociodemographic and cancer-related predictors 64 % of the variance was explained for mothers (adjusted R² = 0.64, p < 0.001) and fathers (adjusted R² = 0.64, p < 0.001). Models excluding spousal stress scores explained just 26 % of the variance for fathers and 22 % for mothers.

Conclusions

This is the first study into the psychological outcomes for parents living in an Arabic country who care for a child with cancer. Both mothers and fathers with a child diagnosed with cancer reported higher stress levels than those from the normal Jordanian parent population. Mothers and fathers of children with cancer reported significantly different levels of stress to each other but models reveal significant contributions of the stress score of fathers upon mothers, and vice versa. The findings provide evidence of the need for psychological support to be developed for families caring for a child with cancer in Jordan.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Masa'Deh et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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