Coping in caregivers of youth with spinal cord injury.

This study examined coping among caregivers of youth with spinal cord injuries (SCI). Using a cross-sectional survey study design, 164 caregivers completed a demographics questionnaire and the Brief COPE. Their children, youth with SCI ages 7-18, completed the Kidcope. T-tests were conducted to examine differences in caregiver coping by demographic and injury-related factors. Further, logistic regression models were evaluated to examine predictive relationships between caregiver coping and youth coping. Several demographic and injury-related factors were related to caregiver coping, including caregiver gender, race, and education, as well as youth gender, age at injury, and time since injury. In the logistic regressions, two caregiver coping strategies were related to youth coping: caregiver self-blame coping was related to youth self-criticism, and caregiver behavioral disengagement coping (giving up attempts to cope) was related to youth blaming others coping. The findings suggest that caregiver coping may play a role in the coping of their children, and should be considered when addressing coping among youth with SCI.

Daily support in couples coping with early stage breast cancer: maintaining intimacy during adversity.

OBJECTIVE: Recent work has identified intimacy as a potentially important determinant of psychological adjustment in couples coping with cancer. Little work has examined specific social support processes within the context of the everyday life of couples' cancer experience. Specifically, we examined the links between breast cancer patient reports of receiving support from one's spouse/partner (support receipt) and spouse reports of providing support to the patient (support provision) with daily intimacy outcomes. We hypothesized that both patient and spouse would benefit from support receipt and support provision. METHOD: Forty-five women with early stage breast cancer and their spouses independently completed an Internet-based electronic diary assessing support receipt, support provision, and relationship intimacy for seven consecutive evenings shortly after surgery. Study outcomes consisted of daily relationship intimacy reported by each partner. RESULTS: As hypothesized, when controlling for patient report of support receipt, spouse report of support provision was uniquely associated with a significant additional increase in feelings of relationship intimacy for patients. Moreover, the independent effects of support receipt and support provision were also found to be beneficial for nonpatient spouses' daily feelings of intimacy. CONCLUSION: Findings highlight the use of dyadic diary methods and corresponding modeling to uncover the unique benefits of support provision that may sometimes occur outside the awareness of the recipient. Results are discussed in terms of conceptualizing the cancer experience in a shared interpersonal context, whereby patients and their spouses can both benefit from support as they adjust to cancer together.

Affective differentiation in breast cancer patients.

Fifty-three breast cancer patients completed an Internet-based diary measuring daily negative affect and positive affect and daily negative and positive events for seven consecutive evenings shortly after surgery. The authors used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (Raudenbush and Bryk in Hierarchical linear models: applications and data analysis methods. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2002) to examine moderators of affective differentiation, or the daily relationship between the patients' negative affect and positive affect. Strong affective differentiation is characterized by the relative independence of negative and positive affect. There were no significant Level 1 (within-subject) moderators of affective differentiation. However, at Level 2 (between-subject), as predicted, increased age was associated with stronger affective differentiation, as was greater use of planning to cope with breast cancer. Also as predicted, increased anxiety and greater use of behavioral disengagement and denial coping were associated with weaker affective differentiation. The results suggest the value of the affective differentiation construct, and a daily diary methodology, for research on the daily lives of breast cancer patients.