scholarly journals The Cost of Cancer: The Association of Financial and Cancer-Related Stress on Maladaptive Coping Styles in Families with a Cancer Diagnosis

Author(s):  
Emily M. Johnson ◽  
Donald Bruce Ross
1997 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Boudreaux ◽  
Cris Mandry ◽  
Phillip J. Brantley

AbstractIntroduction:Although several studies link job-related stressors with adverse reactions among emergency medical technicians (EMTs), more standardized research is needed, since much remains unknown about stress responses, coping styles and their consequences for EMTs. This paper presents the results of two studies. Study I investigated the relation between job-related stressors, job satisfaction, and psychological distress, while Study II investigated how coping is related to occupational burnout, job-related stress, and physiological arousal.Hypothesis:Study I: Those EMTs experiencing greater job-related stressors are less satisfied with their jobs and more psychologically distressed.Objective, Study II:To obtain preliminary information about which coping strategies are associated with greater feelings of stress and burnout and more intense autonomic nervous system reactivity.Methods:For both studies, EMTs from a large, urban, public EMS organization in the southern United States were asked to participate. Study I: Subjects completed an informed consent document, a demographics questionnaire, a measure of job stress (the Stress Diagnosis Inventory), a measure of job satisfaction (Job-in-General), and a measure of psychological symptomatology (Symptom Checklist-90, Revised). Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between the measures. Study II: Subjects completed an informed consent document, a demographics/information sheet, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), and the Ways of Coping Scale (WOCS). They then completed 30 days of monitoring using the Daily Stress Inventory (DSI) and the Daily Autonomic Nervous System Response Inventory (DANSRI). Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between the measures.Results:Study I: Those EMTs who experienced greater job-related stress also were significantly more dissatisfied with their jobs, more depressed, anxious, hostile, and endorsed greater global psychological distress. Study IT. The Depersonalization subscale on the MBI correlated significantly with the following WOCS subscales: Accepting Responsibility, Confrontive Coping, Distancing, and Escape/Avoidance. Emotional Exhaustion on the MBI correlated significantly with Confrontive Coping, Escape/Avoidance, and Social Support, while data obtained on the 40 subjects who completed the daily monitoring revealed that DSI-Impact, DANSRI-Number, and DANSRI-Impact scores each correlated significantly with Accepting Responsibility, Confrontive Coping, and Escape/Avoidance.Conclusion:A significant portion of an EMT's job satisfaction and psychological well-being is associated with the degree to which they are experiencing job-related stress, and, furthermore, this distress level appears to be clinically elevated. This implies that in-service programs and psychological support services designed to help EMTs manage their job-related stress may improve job satisfaction and decrease psychological distress. The coping styles most consistently associated with maladaptive outcomes were: Accepting Responsibility, Confrontive Coping, and Escape/Avoidance. Thus, subjects who were more likely to handle stress with self-blame, aggression, hostility, and risk taking or with wishful thinking, escape tendencies, and avoidance were more likely to endorse more negative outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily K Lindsay ◽  
Tristen K. Inagaki ◽  
Catherine Walsh ◽  
Berhane Messay ◽  
Linda Ewing ◽  
...  

Objective: Acute inflammation-induced sickness behavior involves changes in social behavior that are believed to promote recovery. Whether chronic inflammation can influence social behaviors in ways that promote recovery is unknown. In a sample of mothers of a child with cancer, this report explores the relationship between inflammation that accompanies the stress of diagnosis and changes in social network, cancer-related stress, and inflammation across one year. Three hypotheses were tested, that (1) initial stress would associate with initial inflammation, (2) initial inflammation would predict social changes over time, and (3) social changes over time would buffer stress and inflammation over time. Methods: Cancer-related stress (Impact of Events Scale), social network (social roles and contacts from the Social Network Inventory), and systemic inflammation (circulating IL-6) were assessed in 120 mothers three times after their child’s cancer diagnosis: following diagnosis (T1), 6-month follow-up (T2), and 12-month follow-up (T3). Results: Consistent with predictions, greater cancer-related stress following diagnosis (T1) was associated with higher IL-6 following diagnosis (T1; b=.014, p=.008). In turn, higher IL-6 following diagnosis (T1) was associated with a decrease in social roles over time (T1-->T3; B=-.030, p=.041), particularly peripheral social roles. Finally, dropping social roles over time (T1-->T3) was associated with decreases in cancer-related stress (B=21.83, p=.040) and slower increases in IL-6 (B=.940, p=.036) over time.Conclusions: This study provides a first indication that chronic stress-related systemic inflammation may predict changes in social behavior that associate with stress recovery and slower increases in inflammation in the year following a major life stressor.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-163
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Mohammadzadeh ◽  
◽  
Ali Delshad Noghabi ◽  
Javad Bazeli ◽  
Hamidreza Karimi ◽  
...  

Aims: The emergence of COVID-19 disease has created significant stress and anxiety for health care workers. This study aimed to investigate the stressors and coping strategies in the staff of Allameh Bohlool Hospital in Gonabad City, Iran, during the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease. Methods & Materials: This cross-sectional study was performed on 252 employees of Allameh Bohlool Hospital in Gonabad from March 2020 to April 2020. Study tools included a brief form of coping styles (Brief-COPE) and a researcher-made questionnaire of stressors due to the emergence of COVID-19 among health care workers. The obtained data were analyzed using linear regression and ordinal regression models at the significance level of 0.05. Findings: About 74.2%, 69.4%, 52.7%, 52.7%, and 99.2% of the hospital staff had moderate to high stress in the domains of internal, family-social, workplace-related, infection control, and government measures, respectively. The degree of using adaptive and maladaptive coping styles used by staff were 52.0% and 23.8% at the moderate to the high level, respectively. Maladaptive coping styles had a positive and significant relationship with stress intensity so that for each unit increase in maladaptive coping score, the odds of experiencing higher levels of stress increased 1.24 to 1.45 times (P<0.001). Also, the odds of experiencing higher levels of stress in those who had sports activities was 24% to 76% lower (P=0.003). Conclusion: The findings of the present study indicated a high level of stress among hospital staff. Also, the use of maladaptive coping styles and sports activities had a significant positive and negative relationship with stress intensity, respectively. Therefore, designing effective interventions focusing on reducing maladaptive coping patterns among hospital staff and encouraging people to engage in sports activities can help manage stress as much as possible due to the outbreak of COVID-19 disease.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry A. Maykrantz ◽  
Brandye D. Nobiling ◽  
Richard A. Oxarart ◽  
Luke A. Langlinais ◽  
Jeffery D. Houghton

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the daily lives of millions of people around the world, substantially increasing anxiety and stress levels for many. Psychological capital (PsyCap), a multidimensional construct that includes hope, optimism, resilience and self-efficacy, may serve as a resource for helping people more effectively cope with uncertainty resulting in lower levels of perceived stress. The authors hypothesize a negative relationship between PsyCap and perceived stress that is partially and differentially mediated by adaptive and maladaptive coping styles. The authors further hypothesize that work context (home vs workplace) will moderate the relationships between coping styles and perceived stress.Design/methodology/approachAfter receiving Institutional Review Board approval, data were collected during the first week of May 2020 using an online survey. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques, specifically Mplus 8. The authors validated their initial findings using PROCESS Model 14 with 5,000 boot-strapped samples and a 95% confidence interval.FindingsThe authors’ results show that adaptive and maladaptive coping styles differentially mediate the effects of PsyCap on perceived stress with the indirect effects of PsyCap on perceived stress through maladaptive coping being stronger than the indirect effects through adaptive coping. The authors found support for the relationships in our hypothesized model.Practical implicationsThe authors’ findings suggest that health interventions aimed at increasing PsyCap may be an effective means of reducing maladaptive coping and perceived stress. Future research should continue to explore PsyCap as a potential means of shaping positive health behaviors.Originality/valueThis study makes a unique contribution to the literature by explaining how PsyCap operates through coping to affect perceptions of stress in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Simona Cabib ◽  
Paolo Campus ◽  
David Conversi ◽  
Cristina Orsini ◽  
Stefano Puglisi-Allegra

In this brief review, we present evidence of the primary role of learning-associated plasticity in the development of either adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies. Successful interactions with novel stressors foster plasticity within the neural circuits supporting acquisition, consolidation, retrieval, and extinction of instrumental learning leading to development of a rich repertoire of flexible and context-specific adaptive coping responses, whereas prolonged or repeated exposure to inescapable/uncontrollable stressors fosters dysfunctional plasticity within the learning circuits leading to perseverant and inflexible maladaptive coping strategies. Finally, the results collected using an animal model of genotype-specific coping styles indicate the engagement of different molecular networks and the opposite direction of stress effects (reduced vs. enhanced gene expression) in stressed animals, as well as different behavioral alterations, in line with differences in the symptoms profile associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 6615-6615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas A. De Souza ◽  
Kristen Wroblewski ◽  
Ellie Proussaloglou ◽  
Laura Nicholson ◽  
Andrew Hantel ◽  
...  

6615 Background: FT is an important adverse event (AE) that should be objectively measured in clinical practice. We previously developed an evidence-based FT grading system based on differences in HRQoL, analogous to the NCI-Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (grade 1, mild AE; grade 2, moderate AE; grade 3, severe AE ,de Souza et al - ASCO 2015). We aimed to validate this grading system using a new sample of cancer patients (pts) and report its association with bankruptcy. Methods: FT was assessed by the COST (COmprehensive Score for financial Toxicity) in 2 sets of cancer pts. In the previously reported Development Set (DS), gradations of FT were determined by ROC analyses based on conventions for clinically meaningful small (0.2), medium (0.5) and large (0.8) effect sizes (e.s.) for independent FACT-G differences attributable to FT in pts with Stage IV cancers on chemotherapy. In the Validation Set (VS), differences in HRQoL and the odds ratio for a pt to have declared bankruptcy after the cancer diagnosis were assessed in a larger cohort of cancer pts on chemotherapy. Results: The grading system was developed in 888 cancer pts with cancer (233 pts in the DS and 655 in the VS). In the DS, ROC analyses produced 4 FT grades (G): G0, no FT, COST ≥26 (99 pts, 42%); G1, mild FT: ≥ 14-26 (71 pts, 31%); G2, moderate FT: > 0-14 (58 pts, 25%); and G3, severe FT: COST = 0 (5 pts, 2%). Applying the FT grading to the 655 pts in VS, we had: G0, 146 pts (22%); G1, 281 (43%); G2, 215 (33%); and G3, 13 (2%). The decreases in FACT-G HRQoL measured in e.s. per FT grading in comparison with G0 were small for G1: -0.4 (95%CI: -0.6 – -0.25); large for G2: -0.9 (95%CI: -1.1 – -0.7); and even larger for G3: -1.5 (95%CI: -2.0 – -0.9), all with p < 0.001. In the VS, 23 pts (4%) had declared bankruptcy after their cancer diagnosis. Compared to FT G0, the odds of having declared bankruptcy were 8.6 (95%CI: 1.1 – 67, p = 0.04) times higher for pts with FT G2, and 29 times higher (95% CI: 2.4 – 355, p = 0.008) for those with G3 FT. Conclusions: We developed a FT grading system anchored on independent differences in HRQoL. We applied the system in a different set of cancer pts and it retained its validity. We also found an larger incidence of bankruptcy after the cancer diagnosis in higher grades of FT, adding to the grading’s meaningful use.


2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve G. Caloudas ◽  
Mary J. Naus ◽  
Consuelo Arbona ◽  
Adrianne Anderson

Author(s):  
Nida Shahid ◽  
Tamkeen Ashraf Malik ◽  
Akmal Hussain ◽  
Shaf Ahmed

Abstract Objective: To explore the unmet psychosocial needs, coping styles and psychological distress among people ith cancer in Pakistan. Methods: A cross-sectional correlational study design was used for data collection. The research was conducted in Shifa International Hospital, Islamabad and Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar with a sample of 182 participants diagnosed with cancer. Only those who consented to participate were approached from May to July, 2017. Supportive Care Needs Survey-Short Form 34 (SCNS-SF34), Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer Scale (Mini-Macs) and Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS) were used for data collection. Results: It was found that all psychosocial needs were unmet among all the participants (100%) who were suffering from cancer illness. Among five sub-domains of psychosocial needs, health information needs (35.61%) and psychological needs (30.7%) emerged to be strikingly unmet. Moreover, anxious preoccupation and hopeless/helplessness were highly endorsed maladaptive coping styles. A statistically significant relationship existed among unmet psycho-social needs, maladaptive coping and psychological distress. Conclusion: This Study outcome pointed towards gaps in delivering quality care services in Pakistani healthcare settings, inadequate attention of health professionals and serious psychological health care neglect of patients fighting with life threatening disease. This negligence may jeopardize patient’s overall health, can raise health care costs and consequently can contribute to elevated psychological distress. Hence, there is a dire need for proper psychological interventions for effective and holistic treatment planning which can improve the whole process of illness and recovery. Keywords: Cancer, Psychosocial support system, Continuous...


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