Psychological distress in adolescents with cancer.

A exploratory descriptive study was conducted to investigate psychological distress among middle and late adolescents recently diagnosed with cancer. Respondents consisted of 40 males and 20 females who were diagnosed with a malignancy within the past 100 days and received outpatient treatment. No gender difference was noted among adolescents, and adolescents did not score significantly different on the Brief Symptom Inventory from a healthy adolescent population. Among the various disease groups, adolescents with leukemia experienced the greatest psychological distress.