Journal of Pediatric Psychology Advance Access published online on April 25, 2008
Journal of Pediatric Psychology, doi:10.1093/jpepsy/jsn042
© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Commentary: Adopting to a Broad Perspective on Posttraumatic Stress Disorders, Childhood Medical Illness and Injury
Fox Chase Cancer Center
All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr Sharon Manne, PhD, Fox Chase Cancer Center, 510 Township Line Road, 1st Floor, Cheltenham, PA 19012, USA. E-mail: sl_manne@fccc.edu
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In their study of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in parents of children with cancer, Jurbergs and colleagues (2007) compared a group of parents of children diagnosed with cancer with a group of parents of physically healthy children. Parents of children across a range of treatment phases, including those on treatment, and parents of children who had had a cancer recurrence, were studied. Parents were administered a widely used self-report measure of traumatic stress symptoms, the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (Horowitz, Wilner, & Alvarez, 1979
), with parents of healthy children completing the survey considering the most major stressor they have experienced. The results indicated that PTSS increased in the first 18 months after diagnosis and evidenced a declining trend after that, particularly beyond 5 years postdiagnosis. One of the most interesting findings of this study was the comparison of parents of children who had relapsed with parents of children who