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. 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.

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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

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