Division of Nursing, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge, Sweden.
Psychooncology. 2010 Jan;19(1):29-37. doi: 10.1002/pon.1433.
Definitions and measures of significant others' mental health vary, but stress processes have been associated with caregiver outcomes of this kind. Thus, various mental health outcomes probably appear, either as specific responses to particular types of caregiver stressors, or as part of a general response resulting from an accumulation of various stressors. The present study explores the occurrence of symptoms of strain with regard to depression, exhaustion, and emotional well-being in significant others of patients dying from lung cancer, and how these symptoms coexist.
Measures used were the Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale, the OLdenburg Burnout Inventory, and the Swedish Health-Related Quality of Life Survey. Data from 84 significant others of patients dying from lung cancer were collected at a time-point during the last 4 months before the patients died and subsequently analysed. The occurrence of symptoms of strain was established by creating cut-off scores from the general population. To explore how the different symptoms coexisted, hierarchical agglomerative cluster analyses were conducted using Ward's method.
Approximately 40% of the significant others reported symptoms of strain for each of the three outcomes, and a coexistence was found since the significant others clustered as subgroups, ranging from 'high on all scales' to 'low on all scales'.
A considerable proportion of the significant others were thus negatively affected in terms of mental health. We conclude that being a significant other of a person dying from lung cancer most likely results in a general response to this major life event.
重要他人心理健康的定义和衡量标准各不相同，但压力过程与这种照顾者的结果有关。因此，各种心理健康结果可能出现，要么是对特定类型的照顾者压力源的特定反应，要么是由于各种压力源积累而产生的一般反应的一部分。本研究探讨了肺癌患者死亡患者的重要他人中与抑郁、疲惫和情绪健康有关的紧张症状的发生情况，以及这些症状如何共存。
使用的测量方法是蒙哥马利抑郁评定量表、奥尔登堡倦怠量表和瑞典健康相关生活质量调查。在患者死亡前的最后 4 个月期间的一个时间点收集了 84 名肺癌患者重要他人的数据，并随后进行了分析。通过从普通人群中创建截断分数来确定紧张症状的发生情况。为了探讨不同症状的共存方式，使用 Ward 法进行了层次凝聚聚类分析。
大约 40%的重要他人在三种结果中的每一种中都报告了紧张症状，并且由于重要他人聚类为亚组，从“所有量表上都高”到“所有量表上都低”，因此发现了共存。
因此，相当一部分重要他人在心理健康方面受到负面影响。我们的结论是，作为肺癌患者死亡的重要他人，很可能会对这一重大生活事件产生一般反应。
