Explaining quality of life with crisis theory

Abstract

Based on the premises of crisis theory, we expected cancer patients in‐crisis to report a poorer quality of life (QL) and cancer patients post‐crisis to report a similar level of overall QL in comparison to healthy individuals. To explain these hypothesized findings, we expected the coping resources and strategies of patients in‐crisis to be equally effective and those of patients post‐crisis to be more effective as compared to those of healthy individuals.The sample consisted of: (a) 217 consecutive cancer patients in the acute phases of their illness (patients in‐crisis); (b) 192 disease‐free cancer patients (patients post‐crisis); and (c) 201 randomly selected healthy individuals. Established measures of QL, self‐esteem and neuroticism (coping resources) and coping behavior (coping strategies) were mailed. As expected, patients in‐crisis reported a poorer QL (p<0.001) and patients post‐crisis a similar overall QL as compared to healthy individuals. There were no significant or systematic differences between the mean levels of coping resources and strategies between the respective groups. Two‐way analysis of variance indicated a group X coping resource interaction effect on overall QL for self‐esteem (p<0.01). As expected, the amount of variance of overall QL explained by self‐esteem was largest for patients post‐crisis (27%) and comparable for patients in‐crisis and healthy individuals (10 and 11%). Patients in‐crisis were not able to make their coping resources and strategies more effective, whereas patients post‐crisis seemed to have enhanced the effectiveness of self‐esteem in restoring their QL as compared to healthy persons. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Stress and Quality of Life in Breast Cancer Recurrence: Moderation or Mediation of Coping?

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Living with cancer and perception of care: Icelandic oncology outpatients, a qualitative study

“…This is supported by findings in a study on patients in active treatment for cancer vs patients who had completed it, suggesting that a crisis situation may strengthen the individuals' adaptive capacity [40]. The strong urge to maintain normality as found in this study and to make efforts to prevent the disease taking over and controlling one's life might be easier to fulfil by being an outpatient rather than an inpatient.…”

Identifying response shift statistically at the individual level

“…Response shift is one theory explaining the adaptation process. Crisis theory [40] is used to explain a response to a new health event and adaptation post crisis. These theories should not be considered as competing but rather as complementary [40].…”

“…Crisis theory [40] is used to explain a response to a new health event and adaptation post crisis. These theories should not be considered as competing but rather as complementary [40]. These theories are most often invoked to explain why people with serious health conditions rate their quality of life or health higher over time, but could also be used to explain why they would lower their ratings below those A competing theory to response shift has been implicit theories of change [41], which suggests that the recall of a previous health state is based on what the individual believes has occurred in the interim, and not on their perception of their health at a specific time point.…”