Emotions and Emotion Regulation in Breast Cancer Survivorship

Abstract

Emotional distress in cancer patients is an important outcome; however, emotional experience does not begin and end with emotion generation. Attempts to regulate emotions may lessen their potentially negative effects on physical and psychological well-being. Researchers have called for the study of emotion regulation (ER) in health psychology and psycho-oncology. Thus, this review has three aims. First, we discuss current understandings of emotion and ER across the cancer trajectory, including the principles of ER and methods for its assessment. Second, we present a model for examining the mediating effects of ER on psychosocial outcomes. Third, we “round out” the discussion with an example: new data on the role of ER in recurrent breast cancer. Taken together, these aims illustrate the impact of affective regulatory processes on cancer patients’ long-term outcomes. As survival rates increase, long-term follow-up studies are needed to characterize the dynamic, reciprocal effects of emotion and ER for cancer survivors. Further research on ER may help women with breast cancer better manage the challenges associated with diagnosis and treatment.

A preventive intervention to modify depression risk targets after breast cancer diagnosis: Design and single‐arm pilot study

“…Coping measures responses to particular stressful circumstances whereas ER quantifies a person's response to the presence of an emotion whether or not the emotion arises in response to a stressor. As such, coping strategies aimed at emotions related to breast cancer could be considered a subset of the ER strategies used across a broader range of situations …”

Exploring emotion regulation as a mediator of the relationship between resilience and distress in cancer

“…Conversely, up to 35% of cancer patients maintain high levels of well‐being . Given that distress in cancer has been linked with severity of cancer symptoms, reduced treatment compliance, increased psychiatric morbidity, increased mortality rate, and lower quality of life (QoL), it is important to understand why some patients develop significant distress and others do not …”

“…Emotion regulation in the context of cancer has been linked to patients' adaptation, well‐being and QoL . However, much of the knowledge on emotion regulation in cancer has come from the study of coping processes . As a result, research to date has focused nearly exclusively on emotion regulation strategies which is only a small subsection of the emotion regulation model.…”

“…Research has also been predominantly in women with breast cancer. Indeed, two recent systematic reviews have highlighted that there are no published studies that have used the gold‐standard measure of difficulties in emotion regulation, the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) to assess emotion regulation in cancer …”

Emotional functioning to screen for psychological distress in breast and colorectal cancer patients prior to adjuvant treatment initiation

“…Similarly, Kim et al (2017) found that the presence of psychological problems correlated with lower survival than the absence of said issues in patients with stages I-III gastric cancer (60% vs. 76%, respectively). Additionally, emotional distress in patients with cancer may confer a worse prognosis (Rieke et al, 2017) since, as distress increases, coping deteriorates, therapeutic compliance worsens (Conley, Bishop, & Andersen, 2016;Greer, Pirl, Park, Lynch, & Temel, 2008), and the risk of disease progression or recurrence grows (Pinquart & Duberstein, 2010;Satin, Linden, & Phillips, 2009). It is therefore essential that the oncologist has a brief, quick psychopathological screening tool such as the EORTC-QLQ-C30 EF.…”