Dissertation 28 April 2017: Ruoqing Chen

On Friday April 28, Ruoqing Chen will defend her thesis "Parental cancer and children’s well-being : understanding the potential role of psychological stress". Professor Corinna Bergelt from the Department of Medical Psychology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf will be her opponent. Supervisors are Fang Fang, Unnur Valdimarsdóttir, Katja Fall and Kamila Czene.

The first aim of Ruoqing's thesis was to examine whether parental cancer is associated with physical and mental health problems in the affected children using data from the Swedish national registers. She also explored the potential mechanism determining the impact of stress on children’ health by focusing on the brain development in childhood and investigated the association between stress biomarkers and brain morphology, using data from a Dutch population-based cohort. From her findings, Ruoqing concludes that parental cancer - a potent early life stressful event - is associated with a higher risk of physical and mental health outcomes, including injuries, psychiatric disorders, low intellectual performance, low stress resilience, and low physical fitness.

Time and location: 09:00, April 28 2017 in the lecture hall Atrium, Nobels väg 12B, Karolinska Institutet, Solna