ABSTRACT
Childhood cancer, as one of the life threatening and most serious health problems, considerably influences the cognitive and social functions of children with cancer and their families; however, surprisingly enough, these children are quite compatible with their peers and even function better emotionally compared with normal children. This matter still remains to be a mystery. In this study, the ability of ignoring negative stimuli as a technique of emotion regulation was investigated in children with cancer. For this purpose, 78 children [33 girls and 45 boys aged 3 to 12 years] with pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia [ALL], and 89 healthy children [52 girls and 37 boys aged 3 to 12 years] participated in this study. At the first stage, a number of positive, negative and neutral pictures were displayed to children. At the second stage, they were asked to identify the pictures from among a collection. Data analysis by MANOVA indicated that children with cancer, compared with healthy children, could recognize more positive images than negative ones. Furthermore, it was found that age, sex, duration of hospital stay, duration of disease and financial situation had an effect on the difference between the two groups. Positive bias memory can explain low depression and lack of symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder in children with ALL. Attention shifting is multifactorial phenomenon and neurologic factors and family support play important role in this happening
ABSTRACT
A number of randomized trial studies and longitudinal researches emphasize that despite problems in social adjustment and cognitive damages, children with cancer demonstrate good emotional adjustment. Most of the research findings in this area are obtained using objective tools such as questionnaires. "Vitality of children", as a drawing tool, was used as a basis to draw a comparison between children with cancer and healthy children in this study. Accordingly, 112 children with cancer [5 girls and 57 boys aged 3 to 12 years] and 123 healthy children [77 girls and 46 boys aged 3 to 12 years] participated in the study. Findings showed that the vitality of the two groups differed significantly. Perhaps, children with cancer repress negative emotions and avoid expressing their feelings. MANOVA was used to compare the vitality scores between groups and to explore the impact of different variables. Making use of such tools that indirectly examine the emotional experience of children with cancer would be beneficial. Neglecting this issue can cause children with cancer to be deprived of r receiving supportive counselling
ABSTRACT
Background and Purpose: Pregnancy is a potentially stressful event which can lead to such complications as nausea, insomnia, preterm labor, preeclampsia and_so on. Due to the spectacular case of developing countries and insufficient information in this regard, the present study is conducted to determine the stressors associated with pregnancy
Methods and Materials: This study is a descriptive-analytical research. In order to develop an instrument for determining the stressors appropriate to the social and cultural status of Iranian community, a qualitative approach was adopted to do a semistructured interview with obstetricians and 30 pregnant women who varied in age, parity, education, etc. Content validity used for validation, and Cronbach alpha was calculated [0.75] for the reliability of the instrument. Relevant data were obtained in four categories including personal characteristics, fertility, stressors and social support through multistage sampling and structured interview with 165 qualified pregnant women who referred to private and governmental care centers in Mashad, Iran in 1377 [1998]. Data analysis was dined in SPSS using factor analysis and chi-square with the confidence interval of 95 percent
Results: 51 stressors associated with pregnancy were identified: [1] Health, [2] What people think of me, [3] Environmental matters, [4] Family-Personal Relationships, [5] Religious issues and [6] Financial Problems. The strongest stressor include giving birth to babies with major disease or disorder, labor pain, damage to mother's health during pregnancy or labor, change in the Planning. 16.7% experienced server stress and 13.6% mild stress. Statistically significant relationships were found to exist between stress and mother's education, satisfaction of marriage, gravidity, parity, satisfaction rate of pregnancy, social support and partner support [p<0.05]
Conclusion: Due to the importance of pregnant mother's emotional health and the relation of stress to some pregnancy complications, the results of this research helps identify vulnerable mother's and factors including stress in pregnant mother's and thus suggested consideration of the emotional aspects by giving them support and training