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Review
. 2024 Jan 24;31(2):672-684.
doi: 10.3390/curroncol31020049.

Positive Psychological Well-Being in Early Palliative Care: A Narrative Review of the Roles of Hope, Gratitude, and Death Acceptance

Elena Bandieri  1 , Eleonora Borelli  2 , Sarah Bigi  3 , Claudia Mucciarini  1 , Fabio Gilioli  1 , Umberto Ferrari  1 , Sonia Eliardo  1 , Mario Luppi  2   4 , Leonardo Potenza  2   4
Affiliations
Review

Positive Psychological Well-Being in Early Palliative Care: A Narrative Review of the Roles of Hope, Gratitude, and Death Acceptance

Elena Bandieri et al. Curr Oncol. .

Abstract

In the advanced cancer setting, low psychological functioning is a common symptom and its deleterious impact on health outcomes is well established. Yet, the beneficial role of positive psychological well-being (PPWB) on several clinical conditions has been demonstrated. Early palliative care (EPC) is a recent value-based model consisting of the early integration of palliative care into standard care for solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. While the late palliative care primary offers short-term interventions, predominantly pharmacological in nature and limited to physical symptom reduction, EPC has the potential to act over a longer term, enabling specific interventions aimed at promoting PPWB. This narrative review examines nine English studies retrieved from MEDLINE/PubMed, published up to October 2023, focusing on EPC and three dimensions of PPWB: hope, gratitude, and death acceptance. These dimensions consistently emerge in our clinical experience within the EPC setting for advanced cancer patients and appear to contribute to its clinical efficacy. The choice of a narrative review reflects the novelty of the topic, the limited existing research, and the need to incorporate a variety of methodological approaches for a comprehensive exploration.

Keywords: advanced cancer; death acceptance; early palliative care; gratitude; hope; positive psychology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
EPC complex intervention.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Flow diagram of study selection [55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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