Coping with cancer and a history of health-related events

Cancer is a source of stress related to the resulting change in lifestyle. The processes which take place when a patient is coping with a disease may be explained in terms of the transactional concept of psychological stress (Lazarus, Folkman) and the critical life events model (Filipp). These two complementary theoretical approaches set the direction and aim of the study which was to determine the role played by earlier events responsible for health loss due to a chronic, serious disease in the course of a stress transaction in cancer patients.

The study involved 121 patients with either breast or colorectal cancer undergoing chemotherapy as part of their treatment. They were asked to complete a purpose-designed set of questionnaires which included Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R), the Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer (Mini-MAC) questionnaire, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Acceptance of Illness Scale (AIS). The interdependencies between variables were determined using difference significance tests (Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis) and the Dunn's correction test. The significance level (alpha) of 0.05 was assumed appropriate for the study.

Patients with previous health-related events were found to expect the struggle with cancer to be a greater and more serious challenge. Those patients had suffered loss of health prior to getting cancer and their emotional reactions were heightened. This finding allowed the identification of patients more prone to creating a negative view of their disease.

When planning a psychological treatment of patients with cancer, an account must be taken of their past life events and earlier experiences of being ill, in order to implement appropriate psychological intervention aimed at reducing their emotional stress.