Sleep, Fatigue and Caregiver Burden in Parents of Children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL)

Pilot randomized psychosocial trial of a screening intervention in pediatric oncology

“…Caregivers and their youth who are treated for cancer have been shown to experience high levels of fatigue, sleep disturbances, and pain (youth only) that impacts their quality of life. [16][17][18] While symptoms of fatigue seemed to improve with psychosocial intervention, further research is needed to better understand why fatigue was susceptible to improve with a psychosocial screeningintervention such as EPSI.…”

“…Regarding the exploratory physical outcomes (fatigue symptoms and sleep quality in caregiver and youth and pain catastrophizing scores in the youth) fatigue scores were the only ones that consistently improved in the caregiver and trended in the same direction in the youth. Caregivers and their youth who are treated for cancer have been shown to experience high levels of fatigue, sleep disturbances, and pain (youth only) that impacts their quality of life 16‐18 . While symptoms of fatigue seemed to improve with psychosocial intervention, further research is needed to better understand why fatigue was susceptible to improve with a psychosocial screening‐intervention such as EPSI.…”

“…Considering the variability of psychological adjustment over time, we suspected that ongoing screening and family follow-up support may result in greater improvements in caregiver and youth mental health outcomes than one-time screening near diagnosis alone. Moreover, since physical symptoms of fatigue, sleep disturbances and cancer related pain (in the youth) are known to be elevated during the youth's treatment, [16][17][18][19] and are associated with mental health symptoms in childhood cancer survivors, 20 these symptoms could also be potential outcomes.…”