In the United States, cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among children; approximately 9500 new cases of were diagnosed in 2006 among children under 19 years of age. Among these children it was estimated that 1850 of these cases were Hispanic children. Survival rates have sharply risen over the past 25 years and now more than 75% of children diagnosed with cancer in the US are alive 5 years after diagnosis. This increase in childhood survival rates have exposed a need for increased understanding of parental functioning following their child's cancer diagnosis. While a majority of parents report increased distress following a traumatic event such as a child's cancer diagnosis, the aim of this study was to investigate distress and problem-solving skills between English (N=253) and monolingual Spanish-speaking (N=44) mothers. Data for this study was extracted from a pre-existing data set from a large intervention study on maternal problem-solving skills training and participants were mothers who were recruited within 2 to 16 weeks following their child's cancer diagnosis. Compared with English-speaking mothers, monolingual Spanish-speaking mothers reported greater distress and poorer problem-solving skills at baseline, but only one distress measure (IES-R) was significant after controlling for maternal education.
The findings from this exploratory analysis are significant to public health because it is important to assess psychosocial adjustment following traumatic events, such as a child's cancer diagnosis, among the fastest growing minority population in the United States. It is also important to determine the contribution of socio-cultural characteristics to parental adjustment for minority populations. A better understanding of these socio-cultural differences in family adjustment to traumatic events has the potential to create interventions to improve the quality of life for families.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04112008-051223 |
| Date | 27 June 2008 |
| Creators | Pilsner, Alison Marie |
| Contributors | Robert B. Noll, PhD, James Butler, MEd, DrPH, Diane J. Abatemarco, PhD, MSW |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04112008-051223/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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