Posttraumatic Growth After Breast Cancer: Patient, Partner, and Couple Perspectives

Abstract

Posttraumatic growth is reported by patients and by significant others. Cognitive and emotional processes predict growth. Patient growth is associated with the significant other's cognitive and emotional processing of breast cancer.

Life after cancer: couples’ and partners’ psychological adjustment and supportive care needs

“…This study did not seek to comprehensively examine benefit finding or posttraumatic growth but findings indicate that approximately two thirds of partners and survivors endorsed positive outcomes, thereby extending knowledge of such outcomes beyond breast and prostate cancer populations [30,34,53]. The identification of positive outcomes is clinically useful when there are limited opportunities for changing risk factors (such as gender or psychiatric history) or ameliorating chronic difficulties (such as fatigue and loss of bodily function) [30], and given the association with better health outcomes [1].…”

Motorcycles and breast cancer: The influence of peer support and challenge on distress and posttraumatic growth

“…The Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R) [31] is a 22-item questionnaire commonly used in studies of cancer survivors to assess subjective distress regarding the participant's cancer during the last week [e.g., 32,33]. Participants were instructed to rate how frequently each item was true for them in the last week in respect to their experience with breast cancer, on a five-point Likert scale from 0 to 4 (not at all to extremely).…”

Psychological distress of female cancer caregivers: effects of type of cancer and caregivers’ spirituality

“…Accumulating evidence supports the perspective that spirituality as a form of coping buffers the adverse impact of various types of stressors among a wide range of populations including college students [7], patients with cancer [8][9][10], and caregivers of HIV patients [11,12]. Yet, little is known about the family members' experiences in finding faith and meaning from the challenge of cancer in a close relative [13,14] and whether it buffers the adverse effect of the caregiving stress. This paucity of research is surprising, given the potentially life-threatening nature of cancer, which may precipitate a propensity for heightened spirituality or greater recognition of spiritual needs [15], particularly among female first-degree relatives of breast or ovarian cancer.…”