The importance of resilience to combat distress and enhance psychological well-being in children with cancer and their parents is widely recognized. Resilience is defined as an individual’s ability to utilize personal and social resources to maintain psychological well-being and adapt in the face of stress and adversity.1 Our research team has conducted several studies on resilience, with the aim to understand the relationships between resilience, psychological well-being, and quality of life in children with cancer2 and their parents.3,4 Assessing resilience in this cohort is vital to thoroughly understanding their responses to stress and adversity, which is a prerequisite to guide the development of appropriate interventions to enhance their resilience, promote their psychological well-being, and consequently enhance their quality of life.

We first conducted a cross-sectional study to examine the relationships between resilience, depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and quality of life in children with cancer.2 The study showed that children with cancer, particularly those from single-parent families, those diagnosed with a brain tumor, and those receiving multiple treatments, reported significantly lower levels of resilience than healthy children. The results also indicated that resilience has a strong positive correlation with quality of life in these children.

A cancer diagnosis not only causes considerable stress to children but also negatively affects their parents’ psychological well-being and quality of life.5 Our other study that examined the relationships between resilience and quality of life in parents of children with cancer revealed that parents’ resilience is positively associated with their quality of life.3 The overall results support that parental resilience plays a pivotal role in combating stress or adversities, such as cancer. The results of these studies highlight the importance of assessing the resilience of children with cancer and their parents, while paying special attention to children or parents with low levels of resilience. Most importantly, interventions to enhance the resilience of both children and their parents can facilitate their adjustment to the cancer diagnosis and empower them to overcome adversity throughout the cancer trajectory. These changes can contribute to overall improvement in their psychological well-being and quality of life.

For healthcare professionals, a focus on fostering resilience is an important and promising approach to address cancer-related distress in parents of children with cancer. In clinical practice, psychological interventions aimed at enhancing parental resilience should be implemented at an early stage when the parents first learn of their children’s cancer diagnosis. Specifically, evidence-based psychological interventions with a targeted resilience model should be implemented by healthcare professionals to enhance parental resilience4; in turn, this can help the parents to manage their children’s health condition after the cancer diagnosis, better navigate adversity, and consequently improve their psychological well-being. In addition, family-centered resilience enhancement interventions could be considered to simultaneously target the well-being of both children and their parents.

1. Davydov DM, Stewart R, Ritchie K, et al. Resilience and mental health. Clin Psychol Rev. 2010;30(5):479–495. 2. Chung JOK, Li WHC, Cheung AT, et al. Relationships among resilience, depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and quality of life in children with cancer. Psychooncology. 2021;30(2):194–201. 3. Luo YH, Li WHC, Cheung AT, et al. Relationships between resilience and quality of life in parents of children with cancer [published online January 31, 2021]. J Health Psychol. 2021;1359105321990806. 4. Luo YH, Xia W, He XL, et al. Psychological interventions for enhancing resilience in parents of children with cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Support Care Cancer. 2021;29:7101–7110. 5. Li HCW, Chung OKJ, Chiu SY. The impact of cancer on children’s physical, emotional, and psychosocial well-being. Cancer Nurs. 2010;33(1):47–54.