Investigation of motivation for providing support to children with malignant diseases

Abstract

Hair loss in children hospitalized for malignant diseases treatment is most visible manifestation that dramatically influences their later self-confidence. Further, this could strongly affect possible development of psychic crisis. Scientific researches on motivational aspects of involvement for provision of non-formal categories of support to patients with malignant diseases are infrequent. Therefore, this topic should be more investigated in future. Humanitarian initiative 'Kilometer of hair', as unique philanthropic activity at territory of Serbia in year 2015, had as an aim to collect hair for preparation of wigs for children treated for malignant diseases. The main question in our study was definition of key motives for hair donation. We classified three main groups of motives. Altruism was detected as motivation in almost one-half of all interviewed subjects. Second group included almost one third of all subjects and their main motivation for hair donation was empathy. The smallest percentage of hair donors was motivated with some kind of public approval and welcome from society. We believe that further research in this area could give some directives for program planning of further improvement of social awareness for psychosocial support to children with malignant diseases.