Background The decision to undergo breast reconstruction (BR) surgery following mastectomy is made during stressful circumstances. Many women do not feel well-prepared to make this decision. Objective Using the Ottawa Decision Support Framework, this study aimed to describe women’s reasons to choose or not choose BR, BR knowledge, decisional preparedness, and decisional conflict about BR. Possible demographic, medical, BR knowledge, and attitudinal correlates of decisional conflict about BR were also evaluated. Methods Participants were 55 women with early stage breast cancer drawn from the baseline data of a pilot randomized trial evaluating the efficacy of a breast reconstruction decision support aid for breast cancer patients considering BR. Results The most highly-ranked reasons to choose BR were the desire for breasts to be equal in size, the desire to wake up from surgery with a breast in place, and perceived bother of a scar with no breast. The most highly-ranked reasons not to choose BR were related to the surgical risks and complications. Regression analyses indicated that decisional conflict was associated with higher number of reasons not to choose BR and lower levels of decisional preparedness. Conclusions The results suggest that breast cancer patients considering BR may benefit from decisional support.

Objective This manuscript describes the acceptability and preliminary behavioral outcomes from a pilot randomized control trial of a web-based indoor tanning intervention for young adult women. The intervention targets indoor tanning user’s perceptions of then benefits and value of tanning and addresses the role of body image-related constructs in indoor tanning. Methods Participants were 186 young adult women who reported indoor tanning at least once in the past 12 months. The study design was a 2-arm randomized controlled trial with pre and post assessments and random assignment to an intervention or control condition. Intervention acceptability was assessed by obtaining participants’ evaluation of the intervention. Regression analyses were used to test for intervention condition differences in preliminary behavioral outcomes measured at 6-weeks post-intervention. Results Participants provided favorable evaluations of the intervention on several dimensions and a highly positive overall rating. Intervention participants were more likely to report abstaining from indoor tanning and indicated a lower likelihood of using indoor tanning in the future compared to control participants on the post-intervention assessment. No differences were found for sunburns. Conclusions The results of this pilot randomized controlled trial provide evidence that the indoor tanning intervention is acceptable to participants and may encourage cessation of indoor tanning behavior. The findings provide preliminary support for an indoor tanning intervention that engages tanners to challenge their beliefs about the benefits of indoor tanning. The use of a web-based indoor tanning intervention is unique and provides strong potential for dissemination.

Beliefs that men should restrict their display of emotions, or restrictive emotionality, might contribute to adjustment to cancer and this might be sensitive to social receptivity to disclosure. The present research examined relationships of restrictive emotionality, social constraints, and psychological distress in young adults with testicular cancer (N = 171; Study 1) and older men with prostate cancer (N = 66; Study 2). Study 1: positive associations were observed for social constraints and restrictive emotionality with depressive symptoms. Social constraints moderated the relationship, such that high restrictive emotionality was associated with higher depressive symptoms in those with high constraints. Study 2: only social constraints (and not restrictive emotionality) was positively associated with depressive symptoms and cancer-related intrusive thoughts. The social constraints × restrictive emotionality interaction approached significance with depressive symptoms, such with high social constraints low restrictive emotionality was associated with higher depressive symptoms compared to those with less constraints. No significant associations were found for intrusive thoughts in either study. Findings demonstrate unique relationships with psychological distress across the lifespan of men with cancer given perception of constraints and adherence to masculine norms about emotionality.

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Newly diagnosed gynecological cancer patients are able to attend to their emotions and personal experiences, particularly when discussing cancer-related issues during both short-term SC and prescriptive coping skills interventions.

Many dental schools have integrated tobacco cessation into their predoctoral curricula. However, dental students' perceptions should be taken into consideration when designing those curricula. The aim of this study was to systematically review the published literature on dental students' attitudes and perceptions regarding tobacco cessation. The research team conducted a search for articles through April 2016 using the following electronic databases: Medline, PsychInfo, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL. Each abstract and/or article was reviewed for inclusion. Data were extracted from all included articles. Each was rated for quality appraisal by two reviewers. The initial search identified 2,035 articles, and 38 of those were included in the review. The majority were cross-sectional and sampled students from one dental school. There was wide variation in the measurement of dental student attitudes. Overall, the majority of students in these studies reported believing it is within the scope of dental practice to address tobacco use with patients, but there was variability in terms of the practice of specific tobacco cessation strategies. The most common perceived barrier was patient resistance/lack of motivation. In most of the studies, the majority of students were interested in being trained in tobacco cessation. The findings suggest that dental students will respond positively to receiving tobacco cessation education while in dental school and that educators should include strategies to help future dentists deal with patient resistance. Future studies should focus on the development of a validated measure of dental student attitudes toward tobacco cessation and longitudinal, multi-institutional research that can provide more generalizable findings.

Background Providing informal care for a relative or friend with medical or mental needs can extol a physical burden on the caregiver, including impaired aspects of sleep quality such as suboptimal sleep duration, lengthened sleep latency, frequent awakenings, daytime sleepiness, and poor self-rated sleep quality. Diminished sleep quality can worsen the health in the caregiver, including dysregulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) activity. Few studies have attempted to describe sleep in young adults who provide regular informal care. This study examines subjective and objective indicators of sleep quality and diurnal cortisol rhythms among young adult caregivers relative to non-caregiving peers. We expect that caregivers will exhibit poorer objective and subjective sleep quality and greater dysregulation in diurnal cortisol indices, than demographically similar non-caregivers, and that caregivers with poorer sleep will exhibit pronounced cortisol dysregulation. Methods Participant self-reported sleep quality over the prior month via the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and objective sleep quality was observed via wrist actigraph for three consecutive days. Diurnal salivary cortisol was also measured across the three days of actigraph monitoring. Results Informal caregivers exhibited more self-reported sleep disturbance and greater sleep latency than non-caregivers, as well as more objectively measured sleep fragmentation. Caregivers with a shorter sleep duration were observed to have flatter diurnal cortisol slopes than caregivers with a relatively longer sleep duration. Conclusions Young adult caregivers appear to be at risk for impairment in sleep quality, which in turn might impact health through HPA axis dysregulation. Longitudinal research is needed to identify these relationships across time.

Objective To describe emotion episodes during early and late psychotherapy sessions among women newly diagnosed with gynecological cancer and to examine whether the total number of emotional episodes during early and later sessions were associated with baseline psychological distress, dispositional emotion expressivity, and patient-rated therapeutic progress. Methods The study utilized data from an ongoing study examining the efficacy of two psychotherapy interventions, a coping and communication intervention (CCI) and a supportive counseling intervention (SC), for women diagnosed with gynecological cancer. Emotion episode coding was completed for the first and sixth psychotherapy session for each patient randomized to receive psychotherapy (N = 173). Patients completed baseline survey measures of psychological distress and dispositional emotional expressivity and post-session ratings of therapeutic progress. Results The average number of emotion episodes was 7.4 in the first session and 5.2 episodes in the sixth session. In both sessions, the majority of emotion episodes contained only negative emotions and focused on a cancer-related topic. A higher1number of emotion episodes in the first session was associated with higher psychological distress reported in the baseline survey (p = .02). A higher number of emotions episodes in the sixth session was associated with a higher number of emotion episodes in the first session (p < .001) and higher patient-rated progress as rated in the sixth session (p = .016). Conclusion The findings highlight the importance of expressed emotions, particularly negative emotions about cancer-related topics, in therapeutic progress during psychotherapy among women diagnosed with gynecological cancer.