Abstract
Background/Objectives: Parents appear more at risk for post-traumatic stress symptomatology (PTSS) (Tremolada et al., 2013) in the acute phase of leukemia treatment. Predictive risk factors for PTSS are: younger age and female gender (Rodriguez et al., 2012; Boman et al., 2013), lower economic condition (Jurbergs et al., 2009), difficult past life stress episodes (Cloitre at al., 2009), emotional coping (Barrera et al., 2004; Tremolada et al., 2012) and partner support unavailability (Sloper, 2000). The objectives of this study were: to screen PTSS severity and identify possible predictors of PTSS in parents.
Design/Methods: One-hundred and seven Italian parents gave their consent to this study. They were mostly mothers (81.3%), with a mean age of 40.05 years (SD=5.75). The children were 90, with a mean age of 7.66 years (SD=4.11), mostly with a diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (91%), followed by acute myeloid leukemia (9%). Parents were interviewed after one week from the diagnosis communication (EFI-C, Tremolada et al., 2013), they filled in Ladder of life and socio-demographic questionnaires and, at day+33 ,the PTSS checklist.
Results: Parents showed largely a marked severity of PTSS (88.8%; 3 10 symptoms), followed by a moderate severity (8.4%; 6-9 symptoms) and absence of evident symptomatology (2.8%; 0-5 symptoms). A confirmative model of path-analysis with good fit indexes (𝜒2=5.77, df=7, p-value=0.57, RMSEA=0.001) showed that: parenting had a direct effect on PTSS intrusion (effect=-0.18; p=0.05) and on PTSS somatization (effect=-0.19; p=0.05); couple connectedness predicted PTSS avoidance (effect=-0.32; p=0.05) and future life perception influenced intrusion symptoms (effect=-0.27; p=0.05).
Conclusions: A PTSS preventive screening and risk factors identification could allow to set up specific psychological interventions for parents to help them in their parenting activities.