The role of meaning in gastric cancer patients: relationships among meaning structures,coping, and psychological well-being

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Research demonstrates that the experience of cancer invariably violates patients’ meaning structures, prompting them to use coping strategies to alleviate stress and enhance well-being. The current study aimed to examine the mediating effects of coping strategies in the relationship between global and situational meaning and psychological well-being in gastric cancer patients.

Design and Method: One hundred eighty-seven patients (96 women and 91 men) with gastric cancer completed questionnaires measuring meaning in life, changes of beliefs and goals, coping, and psychological well-being. Participants were between 27 and 82 years of age. They were diagnosed with gastric cancer from 1 to 3.2 years ago. Using Structural Equation Modeling, both the direct and indirect associations between meaning structures, coping, and psychological well-being were examined.

Results: Meaning in life exerted significant indirect effects on psychological well-being through three coping strategies: problem-, emotion-, and meaning-focused. The relationship between changes of beliefs and goals and psychological well-being was also mediated by coping.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that coping strategies are mediators in the relationship between global and situational meaning and psychological well-being. They also provide empirical evidence that in severe cancer-related stress conditions both meaning structures and coping strategies influence patients’ psychological well-being.     

Perceptions of stressful life events as turning points are associated with self-rated health and psychological distress

Abstract

We test the hypothesis that changes in physical and psychological health are associated with construals of stressful life events. At two points in time, approximately 10 years apart, participants (n=1038) rated their physical health and psychological distress. At the second assessment, participants also reported their most stressful life event since the first assessment and indicated whether they considered the event a turning point and/or lesson learned. Lower self-ratings of health and higher ratings of psychological distress, controlling for baseline health and distress, and relevant demographic factors, were associated with perceiving the stressful life event as a turning point, particularly a negative turning point. The two health measures were primarily unrelated to lessons learned. How individuals construe the most stressful events in their lives are associated with changes in self-rated health and distress.     

Integrating Behavioral Aspects into Community Preparedness and Response Systems

Summary

This article examines the role of psychosocial and behavioral dimensions of terrorism that influence community preparedness and homeland defense efforts. Public health interventions will fail if people do not follow the recommendations. A broader public health model is applied to help identify the interactions between risk and safety appraisals, social factors, and behavioral response to uncertain and stressful situations. Community preparedness would benefit by linking disparate programmatic and advocacy initiatives that already exist. It stands to reason that improving the cohesiveness of existing systems of social organization would strengthen community resilience and serve as effective countermeasures for terrorism.     

Childhood Abuse Types and Physical Health at the Age of 24: Testing Health Risk Behaviors and Psychological Distress as Mediators

This study examines whether adult psychological distress and health risk behaviors mediate the relationship between childhood abuse and physical health in adulthood. A randomly selected population-based sample, with oversampling to include a one-third subgroup of former child protection cases, completed a structured interview. Questions pertained to childhood exposure to abuse, adult psychological distress, physical health, and health risk behaviors. Previous research using this sample had identified three abuse typologies: emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and polyvictimization (physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect). All three typologies were significantly associated with poorer self-reported physical health. Psychological distress and health risk behaviors partially mediated the relationship between nonabuse, sexual abuse, polyvictimization, and physical health, and fully mediated the relationship between emotional abuse and physical health. The results of this study indicate that health risk behaviors and symptoms of psychological distress could contribute to some of the long-lasting consequences of childhood abuse on adult physical health.     

An Interactional Perspective on Coping with Intimate Partner Violence: Counterattack,Call for Help,or Give in and Obey Him?

This research reports on an investigation of if and how help-seeking women perceived that they had coped in intimate partner violence situations. Within a cross-sectional design, a representative sample of 157 help-seeking women in Norway was interviewed. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted. Results indicated that exposure to psychological, physical, and sexual intimate partner violence, respectively, did elicit different coping strategies in one and the same woman. There were also significant differences between women who perceived they had effective coping strategies and those who did not. This research suggests that a multivariate design within an interactional perspective could inform and enhance our understanding of coping strategies in intimate partner violence situations as complex, heterogeneous, and dynamic phenomena.     

Toward a Tripartite Factor Structure of Mental Health: Subjective Well-Being,Personal Growth,and Religiosity

According to recent research findings, the domain of psychological well-being may be represented by 2 basic factors: subjective well-being (e.g., happiness, life satisfaction) and personal growth (e.g., self-actualization, a sense of meaningfulness). This study tested the hypothesis that in addition to those 2 factors, a 3rd basic factor is necessary to adequately describe the ways in which people search for well-being. That factor is a type of religiosity that is based on other-centeredness and self-renunciation. A sample of 242 undergraduate and graduate students completed 10 measures of psychological well-being that resulted in 21 scales and subscales. Principal components analyses provided initial support for a tripartite model of psychological well-being. Results also suggested that current measures of personal growth may measure either the autonomy or mature social relationships components of the construct.     

Reconstructive Memory and Stereotyped Biasing

I examined the reconstructive processes of remembering past events when new information is made available. Analyses with a variety of materials and conditions failed to reveal effects for distortion in recognition memory for retrospective label manipulations. Effects of prior knowledge were consistently strong and highly resistant to subsequent biasing information. The results suggest that people are less susceptible to thematic-based, stereotypic information and possess a memory network more flexible than traditional research implies.     

Political Graphology

The interrelationship of digit span and word span was studied in a group of 112 females, 17-81 years of age. When the subjects were assigned to groups of 38 young ([Xbar] = 25.6 years), 39 middle-aged ([Xbar] = 53.2 years), and 35 old ([Xbar] = 73.3 years), the correlation between the two types of span was larger in the old than in the young, reflecting a predicted greater degree of homogeneity of functioning. When spans were scored without consideration for exact order of recall, this finding no longer held, as was the case with a capacity decrement in digit span with the aged, thus reflecting the importance of the organizational factor in senescent memory ability.     

The role of psychological resilience and positive affect in risky decision‐making

Past studies suggest that positive affect produces a wide range of desirable outcomes because it helps people build lasting resources. It may be assumed that these resources build on positive affect over time, which in turn may explain the beneficial effect of positive affect in stressful encounters. However, this assumption has not been directly tested by empirical studies. This question is important in that it helps clarify the underlying mechanism through which individuals with more positive affect might respond adaptively to adverse situations. Using a stressful task that included 20 rounds of risky investment choices, the current study examined whether psychological resilience, an important personal resource fuelled by positive affect, could account for the beneficial effects of positive affect. Specifically, we examined the relationship between individuals’ baseline levels of positive affect, their levels of psychological resilience, their choices in a risky investment decision task, and their levels of positive affect on the final investment task. The results demonstrate that psychological resilience could indeed help explain happier people's enhanced outcomes: They chose higher return although more risky investment options and experienced more positive affect at the end of the task. The current study supports the notion that individuals who experience frequent positive affect thrive through various challenges not simply because they feel good, but because they have resources that they can utilize to deal with these challenges. Findings from the present study support further investigation of the important relationship between specific positive affect, psychological resilience, and performance in risky investment tasks.