Hope and Social Support in Elderly Patients with Cancer and Their Partners: An Actor–Partner Interdependence Model

Abstract

AIM: Assess relationships between oldest-old (minimum 86 years) patients' perceived social support to their own and their spousal caregivers' hope through application of the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM). PATIENTS & METHODS: 58 dyads of patients and their spousal caregivers completed standardized self-report measures of depression, distress, hope and social support. RESULTS: Patients presented high distress levels. Among patients and spouses, perceived social support was positively correlated to their own level of hope (β = 0.44, p < 0.0001; β = 0.56, p < 0.0001, respectively) and negatively correlated to the other's level of hope (β = -0.25, p < 0.024; β = -0.44, p < 0.0001, respectively). CONCLUSION: The actor-partner interdependence model was found to be adequate for describing relationships between social support and hope among dyads of oldest-old patients and their spousal caregivers. Patients and caregiver seem to utilize social support to enhance hope.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 34 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.