Creating Beauty: The Experience of a Fashion Collection Prepared by Adolescent Patients at a Pediatric Oncology Unit

Aims and Background

Adolescent patients with cancer need psychological support in order to face the traumatic event of cancer diagnosis and to preserve continuity with their normal lives. Creative projects or laboratories may help young patients express their thoughts and feelings.

Methods

The Youth Project developed activities dedicated to adolescents to give them a chance to vent their creative spirit and express themselves freely. In the first project, the teenagers designed their own fashion collection in all its various stages under the artistic direction of a well-known fashion designer, creating their own brand name (B.Live), and organized a fashion show.

Results

In all, 24 patients from 15 to 20 years old took part in the project. The fashion project proved a fundamental resource in helping the young patients involved to regain a positive self-image and the feeling that they could take action, both on themselves and in their relations with others.

Conclusions

Facilitating the experience of beauty may enable hope to withstand the anguish caused by disease. This experience integrated the usual forms of psychological support to offer patients a form of expression and support during the course of their treatment.

Cancer, adolescence, and their peers: "they'll give you a story"

Following the model of other international oncology units, a framework was developed to create a special unit for adolescents and young adults (Youth Area) within a cancer research hospital in Italy by defining relevant parameters to improve personalized healthcare delivery and the reduction of the impact of the disease on 14-24 year old patients. The intervention became fully operational in 2007 and allows patients and their families to make decisions on their own care. The concept of "Youth Area" denotes an open model for society to put the patient back into the center of clinical care. We directly want to involve our adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients in participating in conferences so they themselves can send out a positive message to their healthy peers. Furthermore, activities centered on the normal development of AYA patients are encouraged. To highlight this innovative concept, the Youth Area has sponsored various published books. We believe that this intervention may represent an effective new tool for cancer patient care in young Italians.