The effect of leukemia and its treatment on self-esteem of school-age children

The purpose of this research was to investigate the self-esteem of school-age children with leukemia in a clinic setting and to compare it to the self-esteem of healthy children. Thirteen chronically ill children, 6 to 11 years old, who were patients at a midwestern clinic and children's hospital, and 50 school-age children without chronic illness participated in the study. Children were administered the Kinetic Family Drawing-Revised (Spinetta, McLaren, Fox, & Sparta, 1981) to measure their self-image in relation to their family. Children's self-esteem was measured by the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) (Coopersmith, 1981). The results indicated that children with leukemia did not differ in self-esteem from healthy children except on one subscale of the SEI. However, children with and without leukemia did differ on components of the self-image measure, a dimension of self-esteem. Implications of the findings are discussed.