Young cancer survivors’ challenges: staying positive, making friends, returning to school
- New research finds link between young cancer survivors’ ability to envision their futures and their risk of illnesses such as depression
- However, experience in Hong Kong suggests most face more mundane challenges
Even after getting a clean bill of health from doctors, young cancer sufferers still have to battle the mental aftermath of grappling with the disease. For some, that can cause psychological issues down the line.
A recent study by the University of New South Wales in Sydney found that young cancer survivors found it more difficult to envision their future lives than their cancer-free peers, putting them at risk of mental health disorders later in life.
The researchers examined 77 young cancer survivors and 62 young cancer-free participants on their autobiographical thinking – such as their memories and imagining their future – and whether such personal narratives were associated with distress later in life. They reported a link between aspects of their autobiographical thinking and their vulnerability to conditions such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and complicated grief.
The study found that young cancer survivors remembered their past more negatively and in more illness-focused and vivid ways than their cancer-free peers. However, while their imagined future lives were similarly more illness-focused, they were not as specific or detailed as those imagined by participants who had not had cancer.
“It is possible that young cancer survivors who have recently experienced life-threatening illness may avoid thinking about their futures in great detail because this is anxiety-provoking to them,” said Dr Ursula Sansom-Daly, the study’s lead researcher, in a statement on the study published in Psycho-Oncology.
The study suggests that helping young survivors imagine their future lives in more detailed ways may help protect them against distress later in life.