Psychosocial Outcomes in Young Adults with Cancer: Emotional Distress, Quality of Life and Personal Growth
Section snippets
Participants
The total sample comprised 471 university students, 36 of which were young adult cancer patients and off-treatment survivors. This study was performed at different higher education institutes and universities, in Portugal. The demographic characteristics of the participants are presented in Table 1.
Concerning the cancer-specific variables of the 36 participants (12 males and 24 females), they were diagnosed with lymphoma (n = 6), skin carcinoma (n = 6), leukemia (n = 3), breast cancer (n = 4),
Emotional Distress, QOL and Personal Growth: Differences Between Cancer Patients and Controls
Table 2 presents mean scores, standard deviations and medians for emotional distress, QOL and personal growth of cancer patients and controls. Regarding emotional distress, results indicated that anxiety and depression levels in cancer patients did not differ significantly from controls. Considering QOL dimensions (global health/QOL and physical, role, emotional, cognitive and social functional subscales), it is emphasized that role (U = 1461.00, p = .001, r = − .15), cognitive (U = 1476.50, p = .006, r = −
Discussion
The present study contributes to the knowledge on emotional distress, QOL and personal growth issues among young adults with cancer. Our findings suggest that young adults with cancer (patients and off-treatment survivors) are well adapted from the emotional distress point of view, since there were no statistically significant differences between this group and the control group. These results are in line with works carried out previously (Felder-Puig et al., 1998, von Essen et al., 2000).
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Raquel V. Oliveira (psychologist and native speaker) for proof reading the paper prior to its submission.
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