Dyadic growth is a phenomenon not limited to breast cancer or female patient couples and may represent a form of dyadic coping. Patients and partners seem to develop individual and dyadic growth, depending on a combination of gender and life threat. Psycho-oncology services may want to promote both couple level coping and support in order to optimize cancer care.
Obtaining information, thinking about or doing something else, and actions on behalf of the parent with HD were rated as highest use and perceived helpfulness. Emotional suppression had high use but low helpfulness. Participants reported using numerous helpful strategies. Social support was often unavailable to help manage teen concerns.
via Strategies Used by Teens Growing Up in Families With Huntington Disease.
Preliminary evaluation of Coping-Together supported its practical approach and highlighted improvements to enhance its contribution to patient and partner coping.
Significance of results: Psychological interventions for caregivers should take into consideration gender differences and might benefit from addressing the process of finding meaning in caregiving.
Conclusion: Adaptation to advanced cancer differs from adaptation to early stage cancer, comprising a general acceptance of the illness and trying to make the most of the time that is left. Individuals with low social support were less likely to evidence appropriate adaptation to their illness.
Men used a variety of ways of coping to help them deal with radiotherapy and neo-adjuvant androgen deprivation for up to 12 months after radiotherapy. Interventions need to be developed to take account of the specific needs of partners of men with prostate cancer and single men who have prostate cancer.
This study demonstrates how difficult it is to live and cope with a malignant fungating wound. Coping strategies, including going into isolation, or denying any issues, were used. When taking care of patients with MFWs, strategies need to integrate a palliative, holistic, empathic approach.
via Coping with an exulcerated breast carcinoma: an interpretative phenomenological study.
Digging Deep is an innovative journal that guides seriously ill children and teenagers through writing exercises that help them explore their feelings about being sick, and develops their coping skills.
MBSR could reduce stress and improve mental health in caregivers of family members with dementia residing in the community.
via Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Family Caregivers: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
Significant advances have been made in our understanding of psychological adjustment to cancer over the last 40 years. Most clinicians now recognise the importance of psychosocial factors and the need for skills in emotional support. In the first phase of psycho-oncology, pioneering work in the 1970s and 1980s mapped the extent of psychological morbidity in cancer. This has been followed by a second phase where clinical trials have demonstrated that psychological treatments are effective.
via ‘I know they are distressed. What do I do now?’ [Psychooncology. 2013] – PubMed – NCBI.
