Childhood Cancer Case Study

174). Untreated, PTSD symptoms can last a lifetime, impairing health, damaging relationships and preventing people achieving their potential. However, prospects for recovery are good when treated correctly (Kinchin 2005, p. 199). According to Foa (2008, p.26), PTSD is seen to be a ‘multi-faceted disorder’ that poses a number of significant notional and practical challenges with regard to achieving an accurate assessment. Several strategies may be adopted by primary health care providers to assist patients with both acute and chronic forms of PTSD and various scales exist to measure severity and frequency of PTSD symptoms.

Between February 2001 and April 2003, many were completed by approximately 9,282 Americans, 18 years of age or above, completed a survey that was conducted by The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R). According to The National Comorbidity Survey Replication study, 5,692 Americans were diagnosed with PTSD. However, this research used the DSM-4 criteria. It was estimated that the lifetime prevalence was about 6.8% for Americans in young adulthood. This was a jump from the previous year at 3.5%. The lifetime prevalence for women was higher, at 9.7%, than it was for men at 3.6%. “Kessler, R.C., Berglund, P., Delmer, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K.R., & Walters, E.E. (2005).”

However, Diaz and Motta focused their study on adolescent participants and on PTSD. For this study, participants were between the ages of 14 and 17 and were all female from a residential treatment facility that met the criteria for PTSD (Diaz & Motta, 2008). The researchers used the following self-report inventories to measure the level of PTSD: (a) Child PTSD Symptom Scale [CPSS] (Foa, Johnson, Feeny, & Treadwell, 2001), (b) Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children [TSCC] (Briere, 1996), (c) Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children [MASC] (March, 1997), (d) Children’s Depression Inventory [CDI] (Kovacs, 1992) (Diaz & Motta, 2008).

Childhood and adolescence is a crucial time for humans- a time full of physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Upon observing the significant impact that trauma induced stress can have on adults following time in combat or an injury, when adults have fully matured in all areas, it raises the question of what influence post-traumatic stressors can have on development in children. This issue was so significant that in the DSM-5, the psychologists introduced a new, and separate, section of criteria for PTSD that specifically relates to the preschool subtype, or those individuals six years and younger. The first age specific sub-type for this disorder is important due to the rising number of studies and cases of PTSD in children.

Childhood cancer is two of the most devastating words any parent can hear regarding their child. A child that was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1960s rarely survived and typically led to death. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital understood this concern. When the hospital was created the childhood cancer survival rate was less than 20%. Today, through research and discoveries the rate has raised to 80%.

Human brains have the incredible ability to shut unpleasant memories out and hide them. However, eventually those memories will come to the surface whether it is days or years after the event occurs. PTSD is a relatively new diagnostically recognized mental health disorder that many Americans and others know little about. PTSD is estimated to affect 3.6% of adult Americans, about 5.2 million people suffer from PTSD over the course of a year, and this number is rising. An estimated 7.8 million Americans will have PTSD at some point in their lives. It can develop at any age in anyone ( ). In this paper PTSD will be described, explained, and treatment options and symptoms will be talked about.

To obtain the measures of the study Hukkelberg used different trauma detections. One of the measures Hukkelberg used was” The Traumatic Events Screening Inventory for Children” (as cited in Ford et al., 2000). “The Traumatic Events Screening Inventory for Children was used to assess trauma experiences” (as cited in Ford et al., 2000). “The Traumatic Events Screening Inventory” (as cited in Ford et al.,2000) assed how serious the trauma experiences were that the child went through. The screening was a checklist that included these experiences “severe accident, natural disaster, sudden death or severe illness of a close person, extremely painful medical procedures, violence outside the family context, witnessing violence within the family physical abuse within the family, sexual abuse inside and outside the family, and other overwhelming experiences” (as cited in Ford et al., 2000). The study had the children rate how many times they were involved in from 0 to 3 (p. 263). “The 0= Not at all, 1 Once a week or less/once in a while, 2= 2 to 4 times a week/ half of the time, and 3= 5 or more times a week/ almost always” (Hukkelberg, 2013). If a child circled a three to all or almost all of the experiences they were involved in they were assessed for posttraumatic stress disorder systems (p. 263).

Within the human experience, there has always been a risk of exposure to both physical and psychological trauma. The threat of violence, personal tragedies, and economic and social catastrophes are all possible triggers for an onset of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). What was once reserved as a diagnosis for veterans has been found to affect both young and old. The development of various assessment tools have been used in diagnosing PTSD and one of the most commonly used tests is the Post-Traumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale. It is an assessment that was developed and validated by Edna Foa to provide a brief but reliable self-report measure of PTSD for use in both clinical and research settings (Zalta, Gillihan, Fisher, Mintz, McLean, Yehuda, & Foa, 2014). The Post-Traumatic Diagnostic Scale is an assessment instrument deigned to be taken by adults with at least an eighth grade reading level. This review of will evaluate the hits, misses, false positive errors, and false negative errors of this instrument and how to each area is applied in interpreting the construct measurement of this assessment tool. Although the Post Traumatic diagnostic Scale has consistently ranked high with clinicians and researchers, in self-reporting the definition of trauma can potentially become subjective and compromise the reliability of the assessment tool.

Common events that can trigger PTSD in minors include neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and psychological abuse (National Center for PTSD, 2015). Sometimes, adults tend to underestimate the severity of a child’s reaction after the event has taken place because some children disguise their feelings (Dyregrov & Yule, 2006, p. 177). If a parent is also suffering, it may affect their ability to emotionally support their child (Dyregrov & Yule, 2006, p. 177). The severity of the trauma, how the parents react to the trauma, and the child’s proximity to the trauma are three factors that increase the probability that a child will get PTSD (Dyregrov & Yule, 2006, p. 176). It is common for school-aged children suffering from this condition to show signs of disturbance in their playtime (National Center for PTSD, 2015). Severe PTSD symptoms in young children (less than six years old) may include wetting the bed after learning how to use the toilet, forgetting how to or losing the ability to talk, and being unusually clingy with a parent or another adult (NIMH, 2016). The signs of PTSD in teenagers are more similar to the signs that are seen in adults (National Center for PTSD, 2015). However, teenagers tend to show more impulsive, aggressive, and vengeful behavior (National Center for PTSD, 2015). Other factors that are related to later posttraumatic problems include prior psychiatric issues, prior exposure to trauma, the female gender, and family issues (Dyregrov & Yule, 2006, p.

Changing a person’s overall quality of life; it is a psychiatric comorbidity and typically follows an often life-long course especially in cases of young children and adolescents. Due to the nature of threatening trauma, PTSD is becoming significantly more common and may affect up to 10% of women and 5% of men at some stage in their lives, depending on the nature or severity of the traumatic event, the prevalence rates of PTSD in its victims have been reported to approach 100%. According to (Kar, 2011), “The PTSD syndrome is a conglomeration of various cognitive, behavioral, and physiological disturbances characterized by three symptom clusters, i.e., intrusion, avoidance, and arousal.” (Kar, 2011). Since the first introduction into the diagnostic classificatory system (DSMV) in the 1980’s, a considerable amount of research has been done to determine the efficiency of cognitive behavioral therapy in patients with PTSD. The purpose of the article was to review and evaluate the studies of CBT for PTSD following a multitude of various kinds of trauma, and others that were related to physical disorders in children, and adolescents. The article was also meant to review the long-term effects and the role of a preventative measure that CBT could deliver, the current understanding of CBT and its mechanism of action were also

“The most basic definition of Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric sequel to a stressful event or situation of an exceptionally threatening or catastrophic in nature.” (Kassam-Adams, & Winston, 2004, p.409). In the event that a client suffers from PTSD an evidenced based therapeutic concept should be used, this concept is generally called Trauma-Focused Cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). TF-CBT has been used in the management of PTSD in both children and adolescents for many years as it has been proven over and over again to be the most effective in treating clients with PTSD with an emphasis on children. (Cohen, Mannarino, & Deblinger, 2012, p.3). Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can and usually is an extremely

Each year, over three million children and adolescents experience some form of traumatic event in their life (Ray, 2014). Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of a traumatic event (Hamblen, 2009). Some of the events that can cause children and adolescents to suffer from PTSD are natural and man-made disasters, violent crimes, rape, or murder of a parent, school shootings, motor vehicle accidents, severe burns, exposure to community violence, war, peer suicide, and sexual and physical abuse. A social worker must assess the biopsychosocial development and other theories to implement an effective plan to evaluate the needs of the individual.

The symptoms of Post-traumatic stress can vary from patient from patient. Most common symptoms are flashbacks, hyper arousal and avoidance. The first article is “Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Adolescent Survivors of Childhood Cancer and Their Families: A Randomized Clinical Trial.” In this article the researchers put together a random wait list control trial. They would have an intervention with the family of a cancer survivor that had post-traumatic stress symptoms from the family and child. The most common psychological consequences of childhood cancer survivors and their mother and fathers are posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). When patients have re-experiencing symptoms they usually have flashbacks. They relive the trauma over and over, including physical symptoms like their heart racing, sweating and even horrible dreams. Hyper arousal symptoms is when the patient is easily startled. Then lastly avoidance symptoms is when people diagnosed with Post Traumatic stress disorder stay away from places or objects that remind them of their trauma. In conclusion none of these symptoms seem good at all so the research in this field needs to continue to grow to put a stop to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

As established in the National Cancer Institute, “Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide for children and adolescents in America, accounting for more than 91,250 children that lose their lives to this disease” (National Cancer Institute). Cancer is not considered a terminal illness, but more of a chronic illness because of the intense treatment that the individual has to endure. As a result of this treatment the chances of survival for children suffering from pediatric cancer has increased around 80 percent. The increment in the survival rate has made it possible for many parents to not have to go through the acceptance that they are about to lose their child to a terminal illness, but have coping strategies that will make them adapt to the fear of the reoccurrence of that illness. This illness has a great impact on the patient as well as the family because not only do they have to adapt to this illness physically, but also mentally. Research has shown that there are both short term and long term effects that come into effect when the child is both in treatment and also years after the treatment. The type of cancers that these adolescents have to endure range from leukemia, brain tumors and other cancerous tumors that have appeared in recent medical studies. These tumors can either be benignant, an acute case that is non-cancerous or malignant, a cancerous case that will need intense treatment over an extended period of time.While many would say there is more of a

Furthermore, these studies have provided clarity in comparing and identifying potential sufferers of PTSD. For example, in a critical review by Ozer et al. in 2003, it was established that “between 50 to 60 percent of the American population will be exposed to a traumatic event but only 5 to 10 percent will develop PTSD”. These results are supported by a contemporary study by Koren, Amon and Klein into the prevalence of PTSD in motor vehicle accident victims in the Netherlands, suggesting that only 3.8% of motor vehicle accident victims will manifest symptoms of PTSD. Research into survivors of childhood cancer linked to PTSD revealed that children who have experienced extensive treatment - such as cranial radiotherapy - before the age of four, stemcell transplants, or high doses of anthracycline or alkylating agents formed a subset outside the 90% of successful child patients