Perceived Stress, Parent-Adolescent/Young Adult Communication, and Family Resilience Among Adolescents/Young Adults Who Have a Parent With Cancer in Taiwan

Family resilience helps family members successfully overcome adversity, for example, chronic disease or unpleasant situations. However, few studies have identified correlates of family resilience among adolescents/young adults having a parent with cancer.This longitudinal study explored (1) relationships among family resilience, adolescents' perceived stress, and parent-adolescent/young adult communication; (2) trends in family resilience with data collection time; and (3) differences in parent-adolescent/young adult communication by parent gender (ie, father or mother).Participants were teenagers and young adults (12-25 years) with a parent who had cancer. Data were collected using structured questionnaires at 3 times for 4 to 5 months, with 2 months between each collection.Of 96 adolescent/young adult participants enrolled at T1, only 32 completed all measurements at T3. We found that (1) family resilience was negatively associated with adolescents' perceived stress (B = -0.35) and positively associated with adolescent/young adult communication with both the father (B = 0.58) and the mother (B = 0.36), (2) the degree of family resilience at T3 was significantly lower than at T1 (B = -4.79), and (3) at all 3 data collection times, the degree of adolescent/young adult communication was higher with mothers than with fathers, whether the mother had cancer or did not have cancer.Family resilience was positively associated with parent-adolescent/young adult communication and negatively related to perceived stress. Family resilience tended to decline with longer parental survival since cancer diagnosis.We suggest nursing interventions to reduce adolescent/young adult stress and develop optimal parent-adolescent/young adult communication to enhance family resilience.