Background: Parents may experience psychological problems when a child with cancer is hospitalized. Parents are the key person for the children daily living when they are experiencing with cancer. The objective of this review was to systematically review and evaluate the studies related social support intervention on psychological outcomes for parents of child with cancer. A systematic literature search was performed using electronic databases (i.e., CINAHL, PubMed, Medline, Cochran Library, and Google Scholars) from October 2019 to March 2020. Selection Criteria: Included studies were RCTs of psychological interventions that delivered treatment to parents of child (under 18 years of age) with cancer compared to active control, wait list control and non-experimental studies related to social support for parents of children with cancer. The excluded studies if the research subjects were only adolescents, and children of over 18 years old, and studies that had less than 10 subjects. The studies were selected by using PRISMA model. Assessing risk of bias the authors used JBI appraisal checklists, Cochran Collaboration’s tool and ARMSTAR. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board, National Institute of Advanced Nursing Education and Research (NIANER). The authors included fourteen articles including two RCTs, five Quasi-experimental, two systematic review, two literature review and prospective longitudinal and descriptive design. These data provided a comprehensive picture about the impact of the key types of social support intervention i.e. building family strength (BFS) program, informal support collaborative stress management, psychosocial intervention, mHealth supportive care, supportive nursing intervention, and group-based training supportive nursing intervention on parental psychological outcomes.

This review provides an evidence to support the use of social support intervention to improve psychological outcomes of parents of child with cancer. Further research is also needed to identify whether social support intervention can impact on psychological outcomes of parents of child with diverse problems.