Journal de psychologie et psychothérapie
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Mental Pain in Israeli Adult Childhood Cancer Survivors and Its Effects on their Quality of Life

Haya Raz, Nili Tabak, Yasmin Alkalay and Shulamith Kreitler

The objectives were to study the mental pain of adult pediatric cancer survivors. In view of the findings that despite the fact that pediatric cancer survivors were found to be fairly well adapted there are contrary indications and even evidence for suicide ideation in these survivors. The hypotheses were that pediatric cancer survivors would manifest enhanced mental pain at present, report high levels of mental pain in the past and that the mental pain scores would be related negatively with their’ quality of life. The participants were 91 pediatric cancer survivors of both genders, whose mean age at diagnosis was 12 years and mean current age was 26 years, 13 years on the average since the end of treatment. They were administered the mental pain questionnaire concerning the present and the past, the questionnaire of mental pain tolerance, and the multidimensional inventory of quality of life. Regression analyses showed that the scales of mental pain predicted significantly quality of life and most of its domains. The major predictos were mental pain at present. The main implication is that interventions designed to reduce mental pain are likely to contribute a lot to improving the quality of life of pediatric cancer survivors.