Anxiety, depression, and quality of life in children with solid tumors: a single-center exploratory study of sociodemographic, clinical, school, and social functioning correlates.
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BACKGROUND: Children with solid tumors experience prolonged treatment, repeated hospital visits, and psychosocial stressors. This exploratory single-center cross-sectional study evaluated anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and health-related quality of life in children with solid tumors and examined their associations with selected sociodemographic, clinical, school functioning, and social functioning variables. METHODS: Fifty children aged 8-18 years with solid tumors were evaluated at a tertiary pediatric hematology-oncology center in Türkiye between August 2024 and August 2025. Validated Turkish versions of the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-Child Version (RCADS-CV), and Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) were administered by a child and adolescent psychiatry specialist. The primary outcome was the SCARED total score. Sociodemographic and clinical variables were recorded. RESULTS: The median age was 13 years. Clinically significant depressive symptoms (CDI ≥ 19) were detected in 16% of patients, and high anxiety risk (SCARED ≥25) in 56%. Median RCADS-CV total anxiety and depression scores were 42.0 and 44.5, respectively. Girls had higher PedsQL emotional functioning scores than boys (p < 0.001), whereas school functioning did not differ significantly between age groups (p = 0.124). In exploratory analyses, lower maternal education was associated with a higher likelihood of clinically significant depressive symptoms (Spearman's rho = -0.383, p = 0.006). CONCLUSION: Children with solid tumors showed a substantial burden of anxiety risk and depressive symptoms. Standardized psychosocial assessment may help identify children requiring emotional support and guide individualized, family-centered interventions. Larger longitudinal multicenter studies are needed to validate these exploratory findings.