PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, ANXIETY, DEPRESSION AND SMOKING HABITS OF PARENTS HAVING CHILDREN WITH CANCER

Paraskevi Chachami, Theodora Christopoulou, Despina Antari, Dimitrios Kokaridas

Abstract


Parents of children with cancer are a group of people who have been involved in international research, whereas no relative research in Greece has been noticed so far. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of children’s cancer on their parents of affected children in terms of anxiety and depression levels and adoption of health behaviors including exercise participation and smoking. The study sample consisted of 24 people (14 women and 10 men) aged 38 to 60 years. Research instruments included the use of 3 questionnaires distributed to the participants, that is, the questionnaire of Beacke et al. (1982) for the assessment of physical activity, Heatherton et al. (1991) test for the assessment of nicotine dependence and Zigmond and Snaith (1983) test for the assessment of anxiety and depression. The statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS 29.0 Statistical Package. The results showed fathers exhibiting higher levels of stress and depression compared to mothers. Additional statistically significant differences were also noted in parental adoption of health behaviors based on different demographic characteristics. Future researches with larger samples are needed to further draw representative conclusions.

 

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parents, childhood cancer, smoking, exercise, anxiety, depression

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejpe.v11i4.5517

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