TRAJECTORY OF RESILIENCE AND ITS PREDICTORS AMONG SPOUSAL CAREGIVERS OF PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED CANCER IN CHINA

Abstract

Resilience plays a significant role in spousal caregivers’ mental health after caring for patients with advanced cancer. The purposes of this study were to investigate the trajectory of change in resilience over six months after advanced cancer patients' initial treatment and to examine the effect of the selected predictors including social support, spirituality, coping self-efficacy, mutuality, caregiver burden, patients' functional status, Chinese familism on resilience change over six months post-treatment period. A longitudinal study with three data collection waves was carried out. A multistage random sampling technique was used to recruit a sample of 312 spouses of patients with newly diagnosed advanced cancer from five Chinese regional hospitals. Research instruments included the Conner-Davidson Resilience Scale, Social Support Rating Scale, Coping Self-efficacy Scale, Spiritual Well-being Scale, Mutuality Scale, Zarit Burden Interview, Briefs in Chinese Familism Scale, and Activities of Daily Living Scale. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and Latent Growth Modeling.

The average level of caregivers' resilience increased significantly across the first six months after patients’ post-initial treatment (slope mean = 1.982, p <.001) in the unconditional Latent Growth Curve Modeling (LGCM). In the conditional LGCM with time-invariant and time-variant covariates, the selected seven predictors were partially significantly related to in resilience scores change across times, especially in the third month post-treatment. The findings provide evidence that timing is an important consideration when evaluating the effects of psychosocial factors on resilience. Future research should continue to incorporate multiple assessments of factors at the time of early posttreatment to provide insight on carrying out targeted interventions of promoting resilience among spousal caregivers involved in caring for their loved ones.

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