[Family-centered psychological support helps improve illness cognition and quality of life in patients with advanced prostate cancer]

Abstract

Objective: To explore the effect of family-centered psychological support (FCPS) on illness cognition and quality of life in patients with advanced prostate cancer (PCa).

Methods: Using a randomized controlled study design, we divided 84 advanced PCa patients into an intervention group and a control group, all provided with PCa-related knowledge and answers to their questions, while the former group with FCPS in addition. Before, immediately after and at 1 and 3 months after intervention, we evaluated the effectiveness using the Illness Cognition Questionnaire (ICQ) and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy － Prostate (FACT-P).

Results: Totally, 78 of the patients completed the whole intervention procedure, 38 in the intervention and 40 in the control group. There were statistically significant differences between the intervention and control groups in the scores on the three factors of ICQ acceptance (17.89 ± 3.86 vs 15.20 ± 2.83, t = 3.528, P < 0.05), perceived benefits (18.68 ± 3.02 vs 17.08 ± 2.74, t = 2.465, P < 0.05) and helplessness (13.37 ± 3.00 vs 15.63 ± 3.11, t = －3.259, P < 0.05) immediately after intervention, and so were there at 1 and 3 months after intervention (P < 0.05). The patients in the intervention group showed remarkably higher quality of life scores than the controls immediately after (100.59 ± 11.66 vs 92.20 ± 9.54, t = 7.943, P < 0.05) and at 1 month (93.03 ± 13.33 vs83.55 ± 14.29, t = 3.481, P < 0.05) and 3 months after intervention (85.66 ± 17.39 vs 75.95 ± 16.66, t = 3.025, P < 0.05). The covariance analysis found that, excluding the time effect, FCPS significantly improved the positive illness cognition of the patients (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Family-centered psychological support contributes to the positive illness cognition of the patients with advanced PCa and helps improve their quality of life, and therefore deserves to be popularized in clinical practice.

Keywords: illness cognition; psychological support; quality of life; advanced prostate cancer.