An intervention module for caregivers of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

INTRODUCTION: Childhood cancer caregivers report psychological distress and unmet psychosocial needs, affecting outcomes for their children. An experimental study was carried out to measure the effectiveness of an intervention in addressing traumatic stress, depression and anxiety. METHODS: Caregivers (n = 59) of children with ALL were allocated to both groups (intervention, n = 29; TAU control, n = 30) via the SNOSE method. The intervention is a physical copy of a 2-week psychosocial self-help guidebook. Scores on the PCL-5, BDI and BAI were recorded at baseline, post-intervention and 1-month follow-up. RESULTS: There was a statistically significant difference in traumatic stress symptoms post intervention (F(1, 57) = 5.760, p = .020, np2 = 0.093) in favor of the intervention group. No statistical significance was found for its effect at one-month follow-up, overall depression and anxiety. CONCLUSION: A psychosocial module developed for caregivers of children with ALL was found to be effective in reducing symptoms of traumatic stress and potentially depression. However, the maintenance of its effectiveness and the effectiveness on anxiety requires further study.

Spiritual Coping Among Families of Children With Cancer: A Qualitative Study.

The impact of a childhood cancer diagnosis precipitates caregiver's engagement in spiritual coping. This study aimed to explore spirituality among Malaysian Muslim caregivers of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A total of 13 eligible caregivers participated in this qualitative semi-structured interview via purposive sampling. Each interview was audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using NVivo 12 via thematic analysis. Three main themes revolved around hope through the act of praying and recitation (du'a' and dhikr), acceptance of God's will (redha), and faith toward God as the Provider of sustenance (rezeki). The findings of this study contribute to a holistic supportive care system in pediatric oncology as it informs health care providers the role of spirituality in mitigating the emotional impact of a cancer diagnosis and promoting psychological adaptation. As a multicultural country, future studies may explore spirituality in other cultures and religion in the country.

Predictors of Post-traumatic Stress Symptoms (PTSS), Depression, and Anxiety among Caregivers of Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL).

OBJECTIVE: The caregivers of children diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) are believed to experience post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), depression and anxiety. This present study endeavoured to explore the prevalence and predictors of PTSS, depression, and anxiety among the caregivers of children with ALL. METHODS: Purposive sampling was used to select the 73 caregivers of children with ALL who participated in this cross-sectional study. The Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) were used to measure psychological distress. RESULT: There was a low prevalence (11%) of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among the participants. Although all the criteria for PTSD were not met, a few post-traumatic symptoms remained, suggesting that PTSS was likely present. Most of the participants reported minimal symptoms of depression (79.5%) and anxiety (65.8%). Anxiety, depression, and ethnicity predicted the PTSS scores (R2 = .77, p =.000). Subsequently, depression predicted the PTSS scores (R2 = 0.42, p =0.000). Participants of 'Other' or 'Indigenous' ethnicity had lower PTSS scores and higher anxiety scores (R2 = 0.75, p =0.000) than participants of Malay ethnicity. CONCLUSION: The caregivers of children with ALL experience post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), depression, and anxiety. These variables co-exist and may have different trajectories in different ethnic groups. Therefore, healthcare providers should take ethnicity and psychological distress into consideration when providing paediatric oncology treatment and care.

Round Randomized Learning Vector Quantization for Brain Tumor Imaging.

Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) classification into normal and abnormal is a critical and challenging task. Owing to that, several medical imaging classification techniques have been devised in which Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) is amongst the potential. The main goal of this paper is to enhance the performance of LVQ technique in order to gain higher accuracy detection for brain tumor in MRIs. The classical way of selecting the winner code vector in LVQ is to measure the distance between the input vector and the codebook vectors using Euclidean distance function. In order to improve the winner selection technique, round off function is employed along with the Euclidean distance function. Moreover, in competitive learning classifiers, the fitting model is highly dependent on the class distribution. Therefore this paper proposed a multiresampling technique for which better class distribution can be achieved. This multiresampling is executed by using random selection via preclassification. The test data sample used are the brain tumor magnetic resonance images collected from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Center and UCI benchmark data sets. Comparative studies showed that the proposed methods with promising results are LVQ1, Multipass LVQ, Hierarchical LVQ, Multilayer Perceptron, and Radial Basis Function.