Psychosocial Aspects of Children with Thalassemia in Mosul City

Background: Thalassemia is a widespread heritable disease in Mediterranean region, the assessment of psychological and social status of thalassemic children is an important issue.

Objectives: The main aim is to assess psychosocial status of children with thalassemia and to find out the association between some demographic characteristics and psychosocial aspects.

Methodology: A cross-sectional study of (101) randomly selected thalassemic children. The study was conducted at Al-Hadbaa Specialist Hospital for blood diseases and bone marrow transplantation, Mosul City, Iraq for the period from 1st November 2023 to 5th January 2024.In order to collect the required data, a questionnaire was developed based on the standards of the pediatric quality of life Scale (PedsQoL).

Results: shows that the largest proportion of samples belong to the age group (9-12) years and the highest percentage of the study sample is female (50.5%).Regarding education, the table presents that the highest percentage of patients are student (67.3%). The table also shows that (65.3%) of patients have family history of thalassemia. For the number of blood transfusion, the highest percentage was (every 3 weeks) to be (59.4%). The mean+SD emotional domain score was 1.8733±0.602, social domain score was 1.2436±3.55.

Conclusion: The present study indicates that psychosocial aspects were range between moderate for emotional functioning and good for social functioning. And there is significant association between some demographic variables and psychosocial functioning of thalassemic children.

Recommendations: The current study recommended to provide psychological and social support units for thalassemic children to help them to adapt with the disease by reducing negative thoughts about themselves and building a positive self-image.