The lived experience of children and adolescents with cancer

Abstract

Background: The lived experience of children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer differs greatly from that of the adult cancer patient. A diagnosis of cancer disrupts almost every developmental life stage and continues to affect the child, and potentially their whole family, throughout adulthood.

Objective: While it is important to recognise the potential for post-traumatic growth, a considerable proportion of children and adolescents will experience poorer psychological, social, educational and quality-of-life outcomes. Parents, particularly mothers, have been shown to experience levels of post-traumatic distress even greater than that of survivors. As such, there exists a critical need to provide family-centred support from diagnosis through to long-term survivorship or bereavement.

Discussion: Ongoing surveillance, proactive management of chronic health conditions, and health behaviour education are critical to survivors' lifelong wellbeing and can be facilitated locally by general practitioners with support from tertiary healthcare teams in a shared-care arrangement.