Psychological Health and Adjustment of Families of Children Who Undergo Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Background: Having one’s child who undergo Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) is a universally stressful and upsetting experience for the parents. Especially mothers have a key role in children’s everyday adaptation to the transplantation experience and for this reason their psychological health has received comparatively large attention in the literature, also in different phases of the medical treatment (pre-HSCT, during the isolation, post BMT). The presence of a child undergoing HSCT in the family may place also siblings at risk for psychological difficulties. Aims: This paper reviews the research published in the last 20 years on the psycho-social health and adaptation of parents and siblings of children who have undergone HSCT. Method: Articles were found using four electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science and SCOPUS) employing various search strategies: the search terms used included MeSH, headings, text words, or keywords relevant to the following terms: ‘‘QoL,’’ ‘‘adaptation,’’ ‘‘psychology,’’ ‘‘HSCT’’, “parents” and “siblings”. The search was limited to English-language literature published in the last 20 yr (1991–2011) and to those articles including patients who received any type of HSCT as children. Results: A corpus of 44 empirical studies was selected and it was presented here. From this selection three main topics linked to family psychological adjustment to HSCT emerged: 1. psychological health of parents of children undergoing HSCT (N=30); 2. psychosocial adjustment of siblings of BMT patients (N=8) and 3. psychosocial interventions for families of children undergoing HSCT (N=6). Discussion: The information emerged from the review of the literature will be discussed with special attention to methodological issues Directions for future research will be proposed.