Câncer infantojuvenil: Um estudo sobre representações sociais e estratégias de enfrentamento de familiares cuidadores

Abstract

Childhood cancer represents the first cause of death due to illness among children and adolescents from one to nineteen years. Receiving a diagnosis of cancer is a delicate time for family members and how they deal with this experience depends, among other factors, on the meanings attributed to the disease. Therefore, the present research aimed to identify the social representations of cancer in the child-juvenile context among family caregivers of children and adolescents with cancer and the coping strategies used by them during the treatment process. Twenty family caregivers of children and adolescents in cancer treatment participated in the study, most of them being mothers. As instruments were used an interview with semi-structured script and the Inventory of Coping Strategies proposed by Folkman and Lazarus. The data were collected in a public reference hospital in the treatment of childhood and child cancer, located in the city of Campina Grande. The qualitative data wer e analyzed from the Thematic Content Analysis and the data from the inventory were submitted to the Descriptive Analysis, with the aid of the SPSS Software. The analysis of data allowed the construction of five thematic axes: 1) From research to diagnosis; 2) Be a caregiver of a child or adolescent with cancer; 3) Social representations; 4) Coping Strategies and 5) Social Representations and Coping Strategies: articulating concepts; which allowed the apprehension of contextual aspects of the family members' experience, as well as the social representations and coping strategies. Two social representations of cancer were identified. The first had as its main representational elements death, terrible disease and past experiences. In the second, the elements of death and healing were highlighted. In the social representations of children and adolescents with cancer, in turn, elements such as suffering, difficulty and invasive treatment emerged. With regard to coping strategies, the most used were social support and religiosity. It was possible to notice that the two groups of caregivers identified in the analysis of social representations present some strategies in common, possibly because they share some similar representational elements among them, such as fear and death. However, different strategies were also identified between groups, related to different representational fields. In this sense, it can be understood that the social representations acted in the interpretation of the new familiar reality and guided the coping strategies. It was possible to conclude, therefore, that the social representations and the experiences of the subjects are directly intertwined with the coping strategies they use to deal with the cancer disease in their children. It is hoped that the present research may support the planning of more efficient interventions for family caregivers, in order to facilitate coping with the situation, as well as contribute to the creation and / or strengthening of public health policies that benefit them.