Factors Influencing Resilience among Korean adolescents and young adult survivors of childhood cancer

Abstract

Purpose: The number of childhood cancer survivors has been steadily increasing because of improved cancer treatment outcomes. We aimed to examine the level of cancer stigma, coping, spirituality, hope, family communication, social support and resilience in adolescent and adult childhood cancer survivors and identify factors associated with resilience.

Method: This study is a descriptive survey conducted on 139 childhood cancer survivors aged 15-29 years who had been diagnosed with cancer prior to the age of 19 years at a general hospital in Seoul. The questionnaire consisted of the Cancer Stigma Scale, Jalowiec Coping Scale, Functional Assessment of Chronic-Illness Therapy-Spirituality (FACIT-Sp), Hearth Hope Index (HHI), Parent-Adolescent Communication Inventory (PACI), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), and Haase Resilience in Illness Scale (HARS). Collected data were analyzed using multiple linear regression analysis with SPSS 23.0.

Results: Resilience positively correlated with courageous coping, spirituality, hope, family communication and social support, and negatively correlated with cancer stigma and defensive coping. Regression analyses revealed that courageous coping (β = 0.303, p < .001), hope (β = 0.317, p = .001), and solid tumor diagnosis (β = -0.144, p = .012) were significantly predictive of resilience among childhood cancer survivors, and these factors explained 65.2% of the variance.

Conclusions: Resilience among childhood cancer survivors was higher with increasing courageous coping and hope and lower with solid tumors. These results suggest that coping and hope management should be included in the strategies to enhance the resilience of AYA cancer survivors.