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 Symptoms of disease may impair a young person’s ability to interact
with friends and family, or feelings of isolation could also keep
them apart – either way, researchers write in the journal Cancer,
treatment plans should focus on reducing psychological symptoms and
building up social support for young patients.
“A cancer diagnosis can disrupt social maturation, the process by
which young people develop self-views, social cognition, awareness,
and emotional regulation that guides them throughout the remainder
of their lives,” said lead author Olga Husson of Radboud University
Medical Center in the Netherlands.
Helping to manage psychological symptoms and offering supportive
care during the second year after diagnosis may help young cancer
patients reintegrate into society, Husson said by email.
To see how young cancer patients fared over time, the researchers
recruited 215 cancer patients between the ages of 14 and 39 shortly
after they had been diagnosed at one of five major U.S. hospitals.
The participants answered survey questions within four months after
diagnosis, then again a year later and two years later. Researchers
also analyzed clinical records to assess each patient’s severity of
disease, their symptoms and treatments over the study period.
The survey questions gauged each participant’s level of
psychological distress and need for support or counseling services.
In addition, patients were asked about their social functioning,
including whether physical or emotional issues interfered with their
social activities with friends and family.
Social functioning was scored on a scale of zero to 100, with higher
scores representing better functioning. Researchers then compared
the participants to young people without cancer, whose social
functioning scores average around 85.
The team found that young cancer patients had significantly worse
social functioning at all time points. For the patients, social
functioning was poorest around the time of diagnosis, with average
scores around 52, and had improved significantly at the one-year
mark when scores averaged around 71.
However, the level of functioning stayed relatively stable after
that, with no significant improvement at the two-year follow up when
scores averaged about 69.
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Around one in 10 participants showed consistently high social
functioning throughout the study, while nearly a third had
consistently low scores.
Nearly half of the participants improved their social functioning
throughout the study, while for 13 percent scores declined.
“A lot of kids who undergo cancer treatment isolate themselves from
their peers,” said Elana Evan, an associate professor in pediatrics
at the University of California, Los Angeles who was not involved in
the study.
“Their body looks different, there’s a lot of physical symptoms and
psychological symptoms from the treatment,” Evan said by email.
For teenagers, this may be especially difficult, as this is the time
period in which young people tend to become more independent from
their families and experiment with different social groups, she
said. Social supports should really start to be a focus during
treatment, she added.
“We need to really look at the individual strengths of the child and
build upon that and build that support system early on,” Evan said.
“Our findings show that supportive care interventions are needed,
e.g. in the form of online social network/peer support groups,”
Husson said.
SOURCE: bit.ly/2nKv4r9 Cancer, online March 20, 2017
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