THE RELATIONSHIP OF DAILY HASSLES, DEMANDS OF ILLNESS, AND SOCIAL SUPPORT TO THE PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT OF PEOPLE DIAGNOSED WITH PRIMARY LUNG CANCER.
Contributors: Catholic University of America.
Published: 1990
Number of pages: 161
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Mental Health.
Description: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death in the United States. The five year survival rate is less than 13%, and most individuals will die within two years of diagnosis in spite of treatment with aggressive multimodality therapies. Alterations in family and marital roles, work status and social activities may occur abruptly and require rapid adjustments of the patient and family (Specht Ryan, 1987). The psychosocial and symptomological responses of patients to cancer in general have been extensively evaluated in the literature, but scant attention has been given to the identification of variables that might influence psychosocial adjustment in patients diagnosed with lung cancer. Early identification of individuals at high risk to develop psychosocial adjustment problems is vital to the functioning of both the patient and his family. The literature suggests that daily hassles, demands of illness, and social support may help predict psychosocial adjustment in lung cancer patients, but these variables had never been combined in a single study before.

A sample of 56 individuals diagnosed with primary lung cancer between the ages of 31 and 78 completed the Daily Hassles Scale, Demands of Illness Inventory, Personal Resource Questionnaire, and Patient Adjustment to Illness Scale-Self Report. Multivariate analysis revealed that demands of illness (p =.0001) and race (p =.04) were the variables most predictive of psychosocial adjustment and together accounted for 59% of the variance in the sample population. The demographic variables of age, sex, marital status, stage of disease, Karnofsky score and diagnosis were not significantly associated with psychosocial adjustment. This suggests that nurses could utilize demands of illness to help identify individuals at high risk for developing psychosocial adjustment problems and then plan appropriate interventions.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-10, Section: B, page: 4778.

Thesis (D.N.SC.)--THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA, 1990.

School code: 0043.