Parental cancer causing life alteration in adult childeran: A phenomenological study

Cancer is a difficult experience for any family. This diagnosis affects the stability of the family system and imposes sudden and unwanted changes on it. Cancer patients have a complex treatment path leading to physical, psychological, and behavioral changes as a result of the effects of drugs, and they need care and empathy in the hospital and at home to transmit the disease. Some of these caregivers are the older children of families who, despite their own personal worries and concerns, have to accompany their parents in the disease process, and this experience can leave them with risks and injuries and change their course of life. The purpose of this study was to become aware of the causes of life alteration in adult children due to parental cancer. This research was conducted with a qualitative approach and interpretive phenomenological method. The sample was selected by a homogeneous purposeful method and included people who, regardless of the current age, were single, living with a family and were over the age of ۱۶ when their parents were diagnosed with cancer. Data was collected during ۸ semi-structured interviews and analyzed by IPA Smith’s four-step iteration method. From the aggregation of ۵۷ central themes in each semantic unit, the findings۱۷ revelatory structures in the form of ۷ general themes; includes: (۱) enduring and transformative emotions, (۲) fundamental causal factors, (۳) influential external factors, (۴) crisis factors in individual phenomena, (۵) consequences of lived experience, (۶) strategies for coping with lived suffering, (۷) The impact of parental cancer on life. Depending on the environmental stimuli and the level of responsibility, they experienced different, destructive and sometimes persistent emotions and had profound effects on the approach of these children in their possible confrontation with cancer and refusal to accept the repetition of this experience for their children. The greater the family and social support, the more opportunities these people had for resuscitation, event acceptance, and meaning. Therefore, the community needs realistic information and the provision of coherent and specialized support services in the field of prevention and treatment of serious problems caused by adults caring for a cancer parent.

کلیدواژه ها:

Parental cancer ، family of cancer patients ، lived experience