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Childhood can be a fragile time in a person’s life. Adding a cancer diagnosis and treatment on top of that has a significant psychological impact on a child. The physical and emotional challenge of navigating this journey can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including body issues, self-esteem, eating disorders, and, for young teens, even substance abuse.

Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse

A Utah State University study found that 1.5% of males and 3.8% of females from the ages of 13 to 18 suffer from an eating disorder stemming from clinical body dissatisfaction. Those numbers might seem small at first glance, but think about the millions of young people that percentage represents. This also heightens the risk of substance abuse as a numbing agent or coping mechanism. With that information, allow yourself to see the nuance of a child with cancer, whose treatment course destroys the body, and picture how that could alter how they view themselves.

Body Image

From hair and weight loss, and artificially swollen appendages from steroids to counteract chemo side effects, a cancer patient’s body is something that everyone can see and notice. Unfortunately, statistics aren’t readily available to quantify how those numbers and percentages disproportionately impact adolescent cancer patients; but it is safe to say that a disproportionate impact exists.

How do I know? As an adolescent cancer survivor myself, I can speak to the trauma of not having hair, losing weight, having sunken eyes, no eyelashes or eyebrows, and having a lack of color in my skin to the extent I had to avoid extended periods of sunlight due to the danger of skin cancer on top of the cancer I was already battling. The list goes on. As a result, I distinctly remember one of my best friends at the time talking to my mom in the kitchen, thinking I wasn’t listening, telling my mom, with a voice quivered by emotion, that I looked like an alien. He was a 16-year-old kid who came by the comment honestly, and I’m sure, to this day, he doesn’t know I heard him say that, but it has stayed with me to this day.

Cancer Patients Are Predisposed to Body Image Issues

When I was declared cancer-free, I remember my oncologist telling me that I was predisposed to eating disorders and substance addiction because of my early exposure to body trauma through my treatments. My psychiatrist, who I continued to see for two years after my cancer treatments ended, reinforced this warning. I was grateful I had access to a psychiatrist to monitor and stabilize my mood, as well as monitor my feelings regarding body image. Not every cancer patient has access to a psychiatrist because insurance does not always allow mental health care and treatment during and after cancer.

Kids can be brutal to peers who appear weaker or different. The effects of chemo treatments on cancer patients’ appearance can bring about many unwanted comments and insensitive treatment by peers, whether it is to avoid them, comment about their appearance, or ask probing questions that lack sensitivity and understanding. All of this impacts the cancer patient’s body image. In addressing bullying, which can manifest as insensitivity, the Centers for Disease Control stated that 14% of public schools in the United States reported that bullying was a disciplinary problem. As a high school therapist, I got late-year referrals of kids who transferred into my school because they were literally bullied out of their previous school.

My apologies for seemingly going on tangents, but as I do with many of the topics I have written about, I have many personal connections related to the topic at hand. The point is children are impacted by how they look. Few adolescents are impacted more than cancer patients. While some of my other postures may have just been speaking out of a place of experience and relative data, those are facts that cannot be argued.

How to Help

With the problem stated, what can be done to help adolescents with cancer or who are post-cancer with body images? Especially for children, those around them form many of the opinions they have of themselves. Thus, it is crucial to mobilize a good, uplifting community of support who uplift them with positive talk. When they hear positive talk enough, it becomes what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy states as a strategy for positive self-talk.

So, how does Here to Serve help children who might be going through this level of trauma? Here to Serve does recommend therapy and provides resources to get therapy and access to coping strategies, many of which I recommended to my clients as a therapist myself.

The mission at Here to Serve is to help mobilize communities to help patient families feel supported during their most vulnerable hours. We surround patients in a fragile physical and emotional state with positive influences of support, which allow these children to see the best of who they are instead of what might only be seen by the eye of those who may not know them or understand what they are going through. Here to Serve cancer care communities transform the cancer journey and can also change the mental and emotional state of the cancer patient.

By Bryan Quintas, M.S., AMFT

Bryan Quintas is a Stage IV childhood cancer survivor. After battling cancer at 16, he has endured life-long effects from his treatments. Even so, he graduated from USC’s Annenberg School with a bachelor’s degree in communications. He also holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology from Fuller Seminary, specifically in marriage and family therapy. He has dedicated his life and career to helping others through life’s challenges.

References

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023, September 28). Fast facts: Preventing bullying |violence prevention|injury Center|CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/bullyingresearch/fastfact.html#:~:text=Bullying%20is%20a%20frequent%20discipline,and%20primary%20schools%20(9%25).
• Sussex Publishers. (n.d.). Self-talk. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/self-talk
• University, U. S. (2023, December 14). Body image in adolescence. USU. https://extension.usu.edu/nutrition/research/body-image-in-adolescence#:~:text=While%20body%20dissatisfaction%20can%20occur,%2C%20%26%20Greenleaf%2C%202015).