Exploring the Mental Health of Parents Having Children With Cancer

Caring for children with cancer is described as life-changing experience and overwhelming stress for parents. Poor quality of life and mental health problems such as depression and anxiety were found in this population. The psychological status of them is still waited to be improved. As a dominant term in positive psychology, resilience is commonly regarded as the ability to move forward or keep normal under adversity. It was proved to be associated with psychological outcomes in adolescents and chronic illness patients, enhanced resilience usually along with improved mental health, while little evidence was available in the parents of children with cancer.

A cross-sectional study will be conducted to explore the level of resilience and psychological outcomes such as quality of life, depression, anxiety and well-being in parents of children with cancer using questionnaires. Such results will be compared with normal population to help evaluate the psychological status of those parents. The relationship between resilience and these psychological outcomes will also be examined. Lower resilience and higher resilience of the parents will be determined by the lowest and highest quartile of The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) scores. Subsequently, a qualitative study will be conducted to explore the experience of those parents with lower resilience and higher resilience.

It is anticipated that risk parents of children with cancer could be identified from the inferior outcomes of resilience and psychological outcomes. Both the results of cross-sectional study and qualitative study will guide the development of interventions designed to enhance resilience and promote positive psychological outcomes among targeted parents of children with cancer under risk.