Psychosocial Problems Faced by Thalassemia Patients and their Parents

Abstract

Background: Thalassemia is a highly prevalent autosomal recessive illness worldwide. Patients and their caregivers must bear many psychosocial pressures. The goal of this study is to provide a summary of the body of literature that identifies the psychological issues that people diagnosed with thalassemia and their parent encounter. Methodology: This systematic review investigates articles explaining psychosocial problems faced by thalassemia patients and their families. English articles, published from 2002 to 2022, we resourced via PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar. The Mesh-based search terms were "thalassemia" and "psychosocial". Results: The electronic search yielded 7540 articles. A total of 22 articles were found to be appropriate for further analysis after the inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. 8 articles revealed adverse effects on the education of the patients. Moreover, the study revealed that patients suffered from psychosocial problems like mood disorders, behavior disorders, and low self-esteem. The major issues faced by parents were financial expenditure, affected mutual relationships, and loss of interest. Conclusion: According to the results, thalassemic children faced extreme psychosocial issues. Psychotic problems and sexual problems were common among teenagers. Parents also faced issues like financial expenditure and their mutual relationship even marriage breakup. All this poses a major need to carry out strategies and interventions to help the patients and their parents cope with these psychosocial problems.