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Helping Yourself by Offering Help: Mediators of Expressive Helping in Survivors of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:A randomized experiment by Rini et al. (Health Psychol. 33(12):1541-1551, 2014) demonstrated that expressive helping, which involves three expressive writing sessions regarding hematopoietic stem cell transplant, followed by one writing session directed toward helping other stem cell transplant recipients, reduced psychological distress and bothersome physical symptoms among stem cell transplant recipients with elevated survivorship problems, relative to a neutral writing control condition. PURPOSE:The current study evaluated whether word use reflective of emotional expression, cognitive processing, and change in perspective mediates the effects of expressive helping. METHOD:The essays of 67 stem cell transplant recipients with high survivorship problems were analyzed with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Multiple mediation modeling was used to test the hypothesized mechanisms of expressive helping on distress and bothersome physical symptoms. RESULTS:Relative to the control condition, expressive helping produced significant reductions in psychological distress and marginal reductions in physical symptom bother in the analyzed subset of participants from the parent study. Results indicated that positive emotion word use significantly mediated effects of expressive helping on reduced distress, but only for participants who used average (compared to above or below average) rates of negative emotion words. Cognitive processing and change in perspective did not significantly mediate benefits of expressive helping. CONCLUSIONS:Expressive helping carried its positive effects on distress through participants' higher expression of positive emotions when coupled with moderate rates of negative emotions. Findings highlight the benefit of expressing both positive and negative emotions in stressful situations.

SUBMITTER: Williamson TJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5819612 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Helping Yourself by Offering Help: Mediators of Expressive Helping in Survivors of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant.

Williamson Timothy J TJ Stanton Annette L AL Austin Jane E JE Valdimarsdottir Heiddis B HB Wu Lisa M LM Krull Jennifer L JL Rini Christine M CM

Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine 20171001 5

<h4>Background</h4>A randomized experiment by Rini et al. (Health Psychol. 33(12):1541-1551, 2014) demonstrated that expressive helping, which involves three expressive writing sessions regarding hematopoietic stem cell transplant, followed by one writing session directed toward helping other stem cell transplant recipients, reduced psychological distress and bothersome physical symptoms among stem cell transplant recipients with elevated survivorship problems, relative to a neutral writing cont ...[more]

PMID: 28462480

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Project description:Patient-reported outcomes among survivors of pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) are understudied. We compared symptom prevalence, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and risk factors in adult survivors of childhood hematologic malignancies treated with HSCT to those treated with conventional therapy and noncancer controls. Survivors of childhood hematologic malignancies (HSCT N = 112 [70% allogeneic, 30% autologous]; conventionally treated N = 1106) and noncancer controls (N = 242) from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study completed surveys assessing 10 symptom domains and SF-36 HRQOL summary scores. Chronic health conditions (CHCs) were validated by clinical assessment. Multivariable logistic regression reveals that compared with noncancer controls, HSCT survivors endorsed a significantly higher symptom prevalence in sensation (OR = 4.7, 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.6-8.4), motor/movement (OR = 4.3, 95% CI, 1.6-11.0), pulmonary (OR = 4.6, 95% CI, 1.8-11.8), and memory domains (OR = 4.8, 95% CI, 2.5-9.2), and poorer physical HRQOL (OR = 6.9, 95% CI, 2.8-17.0). HSCT and conventionally treated survivors had a similar prevalence of all symptom domains and HRQOL (all P > .05); however, HSCT survivors had a significantly higher cumulative prevalence for specific symptoms: double vision (P = .04), very dry eyes (P < .0001), and trouble seeing when wearing glasses (P < .0001). Occurrence of organ-specific CHCs, instead of transplant receipt, was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of all symptom domains (all P < .05) in adult survivors of childhood cancer, except for pain and anxiety domains. This study found that patient-reported outcomes were equally impaired between HSCT and conventionally treated survivors, but poorer in both groups compared with noncancer controls. Poor patient-reported outcomes in all survivors of childhood hematologic malignancies correlated with the presence of CHCs, whether treated with conventional therapy or HSCT.

Dataset Information

Helping Yourself by Offering Help: Mediators of Expressive Helping in Survivors of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant.

Publications

Helping Yourself by Offering Help: Mediators of Expressive Helping in Survivors of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant.

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