Coping with Cancer in Remission: Stressors and Strategies Reported by Children and Adolescents

Thirty-nine school-age children and adolescents with cancer in remission completed the Children's Stress Inventory (CSI) and a cancer-related stress and coping measure (McCabe & Weisz, 1988) that elicited information about their life stressors and coping strategies. Children identified a range of stressors including general life and cancer-related stress, but general life stressors accounted for the majority of their perceived stress. Children were not consistent across cancer-related and non-cancer-related stressful situations, except for their use of intrapsychic coping strategies. Compared with school-age children, adolescents used more emotion-management and less problem-solving coping strategies when faced with cancer-related stressors, but not when dealing with non-cancer-related stress. When coping with cancer-related stress, females used more emotion-management and less problem-solving strategies than males. Findings have implications for refinement of measures and future research.