소아 혈액 종양 환자 및 가족의 심리적 특징

The Psychological Characteristics of Child Leukemic Patients and Their Family

This study is to investigate the psychological characteristics of children suffering from hematologic cancer patients and to compare them with those o f their siblings as control according to age groups. W e also examined the psychopathology o f their parents and family environment Forthis reason, 1) We examined the difference in age groups (children vs adolescents) using the self-report psychological questionnaire for anxiety and depression. 2) We examined the difference o f the study group by age variable using the child behavior checklist for parents. 3) We examined the difference o f the result reported by adolescents and by the parents. 4) We also examined the psychopathology o f the parents using self-reports for parents. So 22 leukemic outpatients(lO children and 12 adolescents) in their maintenance chemotherapy phase for acute lymphocytic leukemia or lymphoma have completed the psychiatric interviews and the self-reports. For the self-reports, we have used Children’s Depression Inventory (C D I), Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (R C M A S ), State-trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (ST A IC ) for all age groups and in additon the Youth Self Report(YSR) for adolescents. To evaluate the children’s problem behavior, C hild behavior checklists (C B C L ) were filled up by their parents. A nd 36 parents performed Symptom Check List-90-Revison(SCL-90-R), Beck Depression Inventory (B D I). We concluded that the child hematologic cancer patients have the tendency to express no prominent depression or anxiety and no age effect when self-reports such as C D I, RCM A S, STAIC were administered. A nd the siblings showed no significant difference compared to cancer patients. However, when C B C L was administered to by the parents, there were high scores in the childhood leukemic patients and the adolescent sibling controls group comparing to the other groups and such trend was more prominent in the leukemic patients group(p<0.05). Also when the Y S R and C B C L were compared, the Y S R &#4462;showed high scores in the both adolescent leukemic patients(p<0.0l) and sibling controls group(p<0.05). Therefore we can suggest that the leukemic patients have the tendency to repress their own symptoms as they grow older. The parents are relatively well adapted when there are leukemic patients in their family.