Today on the podcast, we talk to Dr. Eyglo Gudmundsdottir about the incredible stress that parents experience while caring for their child with cancer.  She is unique authority on this subject, not only because she is a practicing clinical psychologist, has a PhD in medical science from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and wrote her thesis on vital exhaustion (we’ll discuss what this is in the show) in parents of children with cancer, but also because she cared for her son through his decade-long battle with cancer.  So from both the parental perspective and the research perspective, she has seen, as she says, “all the colors of this nightmare.”

Further resources about Dr. Gudmundsdottir’s research:

Download Dr. Gudmundsdottir’s lecture slides about Vital Exhaustion here.

Selected Papers:

Psychological outcomes in Swedish and Icelandic parents following a child’s cancer—in the light of site-related differences (paywall)

Psychological resilience and long-term distress in Swedish and Icelandic parents’ adjustment to childhood cancer