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Getting cancer is "just bad luck" : exploring bereaved emerging and young adults' cancer risk uncertainty after caring for a parent with advanced cancer
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BACKGROUND: Emerging and young adult caregivers (EYACs) who provide care to a parent with advanced cancer are underrepresented in caregiving scholarship, and yet, are not uncommon. Little is known about the psychosocial impacts of caring for a parent at this age or how EYACs manage their uncertainty regarding their own, potentially elevated, future cancer risk.
AIMS: To employ Uncertainty Management Theory (UMT) to examine how bereaved EYACs of a parent who died of advanced cancer appraise and manage their uncertainty regarding their personal cancer risk.
METHODS: We conducted a secondary analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with EYACs (age 18-35) who cared for a parent who died of advanced cancer (n = 33) < 5 years prior. The interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed.
RESULTS: Some EYACs described appraising their cancer risk uncertainty as an opportunity and were motivated to reduce their risks through behavior choices. Others appraised it as a danger and experienced anxiety, paranoia, and fatalism about their risk. Others described their parents' cancer as "just bad luck," believing it to be a random anomaly that could not impact their cancer risk and reported no changes in their appraisal of their cancer risk uncertainty.
CONCLUSIONS: EYACs' opportunity and danger appraisals align with studies of high hereditary risk populations but reporting no change in cancer risk uncertainty is unique. The long-term health implications of appraising their parent's cancer as a random occurrence, disconnected from their personal risk, remain unknown. Future research should seek to help both bereaved and active EYACs better understand their cancer risk and manage their uncertainty.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pon.70161
Voir la revue «Psycho-oncology, 34»
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