Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Apr 1;11(4):e0152778.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0152778. eCollection 2016.

Posttraumatic Stress and Attentional Bias towards Cancer-Related Stimuli in Parents of Children Recently Diagnosed with Cancer

Martin Cernvall  1 , Emma Hovén  1 , Lisa Ljungman  1 , Gustaf Ljungman  2 , Per Carlbring  3 , Louise von Essen  1
Affiliations

Posttraumatic Stress and Attentional Bias towards Cancer-Related Stimuli in Parents of Children Recently Diagnosed with Cancer

Martin Cernvall et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate whether posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are related to attentional bias towards cancer-related stimuli among parents of children recently diagnosed with cancer.

Methods: Sixty-two parents completed questionnaires measuring PTSS, depression, and anxiety and the emotional Stroop task via the Internet. The emotional Stroop task included cancer-related words, cardiovascular disease-related words, and neutral words.

Results: Participants were split in two groups based on the median of PTSS: High-PTSS and Low-PTSS. There was a significant interaction between word-type and group and a planned contrast test of this interaction indicated that the High-PTSS group had longer response latencies on cancer-related words compared to the other word-type and group combinations.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that PTSS are related to attentional bias towards cancer-related stimuli among parents of children recently diagnosed with cancer. Implications of this finding for the understanding of PTSS in this population, future research, and clinical practice are discussed.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The effect of word-type and group on response latency in the emotional Stroop task (error bars represent standard errors [SE]).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Kazak AE, Alderfer M, Rourke MT, Simms S, Streisand R, Grossman JR. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in families of adolescent childhood cancer survivors. J Pediatr Psychol. 2004;29(3):211–9. - PubMed
    1. Kazak AE, Boeving CA, Alderfer MA, Hwang WT, Reilly A. Posttraumatic stress symptoms during treatment in parents of children with cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2005;23(30):7405–10. 10.1200/JCO.2005.09.110 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lindahl AN, Lindblad F, Boman KK. Parental traumatic stress during and after paediatric cancer treatment. Acta Oncol. 2005;44(4):382–8. 10.1080/02841860510029789 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Phipps S, Long A, Hudson M, Rai SN. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress in children with cancer and their parents: effects of informant and time from diagnosis. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2005;45(7):952–9. 10.1002/pbc.20373 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Barakat LP, Kazak AE, Meadows AT, Casey R, Meeske K, Stuber ML. Families surviving childhood cancer: a comparison of posttraumatic stress symptoms with families of healthy children. J Pediat Psychol. 1997;22(6):843–59. 10.1093/jpepsy/22.6.843 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types