An exploratory study of the relationship between psychological variables and chemotherapy side effects from cancer treatment

The purpose of this study was to explore a relationship between cancer patients' reactions to their illness and its treatment and the experience of side effects from chemotherapy treatments. . Twenty pre-chemotherapy patients served as subjects. They were interviewed before their treatments and again after treatment to obtain their evaluations of the severity of side effects. A physician also rated the side effects. Five months after the last pre-chemotherapy interview, hospital records were examined to find out which subjects were alive and which subjects had died from their cancers.

The subjects' and physician's evaluations of side effects as well as survival data were used to group subjects into high or low side effect groups and survival or nonsurvival groups. Interview data was analyzed to find items that subjects had discussed in their pre-chemotherapy interviews. The frequency of mention of these items was compared across subject groups.

The major findings of the research were that low side effect subjects reported coping mechanisms that helped them deal with the stress of cancer treatment more often than did high side effect subjects. Also, the low side effect subjects had continued to participate in their normal

vi activities and were optimistic about the outcome of their treatment. High side effect subjects were more likely to express resentment about the quality of their earlier treatment, had reduced their activity patterns and described their functioning as impaired. Survival was related to maintained activity patterns, report of coping mechanisms and optimism about treatment outcome.

Although this is an exploratory study and caution should be maintained when generalizing from the results, the findings suggest that cancer patients who are dissatisfied with the quality of their earlier treatment, are also likely to be critical of the impact of their chemotherapy treatments. Also, an optimistic attitude about treatment outcome, good stress tolerance and maintained activity patterns are associated with low side effects and survival.