The prevalence of children affected by parental cancer and their use of specialized psychiatric services: the 1987 Finnish Birth Cohort study

Abstract

The studies reporting population-based estimates of the proportion of children with a parent suffering from cancer are very few. These children have been shown to suffer from psychological symptoms, but it is not known whether their use of psychiatric services is increased. Our study examined the prevalence of children affected by parental cancer at national level and whether these children use specialized psychiatric services more than their peers. The study is a retrospective population-based registry study. All 60,069 children born in Finland in 1987 were followed up with various health and social registers from 1987 to 2008. The associations of parental cancer treatments with children's psychiatric service use were analyzed with logistic regressions. During the 21-year follow-up 3,909 (6.6%) of the children had a parent suffering from cancer. The children of the cancer patients used more specialized psychiatric care than their peers and the service use depended on parent's gender, as well as cohort members' gender and the age at occurrence. The combination of parental cancer and psychiatric disorder, whether the ill parent or spouse, increased the children's psychiatric service use even more. Children affected by parental cancer comprise a substantial part of the population in society using increased level of psychiatric services. Parental cancer is clearly an illness which has to be taken into account in planning child- and parenting-focused prevention and promotion actions in adult health care. "Parent's cancer is like a tsunami which rolls over the whole family. If it struck a thousand families at the same time the whole healthcare system would be mobilized. But when it strikes one family at a time you are left alone with your children" (quote from a father during a family intervention). Weaver et al.1 have reported that 14% of all cancer survivors in the USA have minor dependent children, representing a population of about 1.58 million survivors and 2.85 million children. A significant part of working age population is thus struggling with concerns related to serious illness, parenting and the wellbeing of children.