Worries and Benefit Finding in Cancer Survivors and Parents: A Longitudinal Study

The interplay and longitudinal associations between positive and negative illness-related experiences in childhood cancer survivors and their families remain unclear. Therefore, benefit finding, cancer-related worries, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction were prospectively investigated in childhood cancer survivors and parents. Directionality of effects and interactions between benefit finding and cancer-related worries in predicting general well-being were examined.

Childhood cancer survivors (n = 125 at T1; aged 14-25), mothers (n = 133 at T1), and fathers (n = 91 at T1) completed two annual questionnaires on benefit finding, cancer-related worries, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction. Cross-lagged panel analyses including benefit finding, cancer-related worries, their interaction, and depressive symptoms or life satisfaction were conducted in survivors, mothers, and fathers.

Relatively high stability coefficients were found for all study variables. In survivors, cancer-related worries predicted relative increases in depressive symptoms and benefit finding over time. Benefit finding predicted relative increases in life satisfaction over time and buffered negative effects of cancer-related worries on life satisfaction. In mothers and fathers, positive correlated change at T2 (the correlation between residuals at T2) indicated that relative change in benefit finding over time was positively related to relative change in cancer-related worries.

Benefit finding was related both to positive well-being and negative illness experiences, which calls for more research to unravel the different functions of benefit finding over time. Clinicians should be encouraged to attend to positive illness experiences along with more negative ones to obtain a more nuanced view on the illness experiences of survivors and their families.