Spousal Support, Emotional Disclosure, and Adjustment to Head and Neck Cancer

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Dr. Badr's long-term goal is to develop a multi-method research program to study psychological, social, and physical functioning in couples coping with cancer. The K07 award will enable Dr. Badr to take the necessary first steps toward this goal by providing training in the design and implementation of couples' interaction protocols, coding techniques, and the analysis of dyadic data. Specifically, the training plan includes: (1) formal course work; (2) regular mentoring from sponsors and collaborators; (3) participation in seminars and national conferences; (4) tutorials by experts; (5) mentored research; and (6) clinical practice. The combination of Dr. Badr's post-doctoral training, the expertise of her mentoring team, and the research environment of M. D. Anderson will facilitate the successful implementation of the proposed study. This research plan is devoted to the implementation of an independent project that integrates the marital and psycho-oncology literatures to study the effects of spousal communication on cognitive processing, relationship satisfaction, and quality of life (QOL) in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) and their spouses. Specific aims are to: (1) examine associations between couples' communication styles (e.g., patient and partner disclosure, patient and partner holding back of cancer-related concerns, partner positive and negative affective responses to patient disclosure) and patient and partner cognitive processing, using self report and observational methods; (2) examine associations between couples' communication styles (e.g., patient and partner disclosure, patient and partner holding back of cancer-related concerns, partner positive and negative affective responses to patient disclosure) at the initiation of treatment and patient and spouse psychological functioning (e.g., distress) and general QOL 4 months after treatment, using self-report and observational methods; and, (3) to examine associations between patient symptom distress, patient disclosure, and patient cognitive processing over the course of radiation treatment for HNC. This application addresses the National Cancer Institute's continuing commitment to developing initiatives to understand the impact of cancer on the family, and is unique in its multi-method approach. Collectively, the outcomes of this study will allow us to identify adaptive and maladaptive spousal interaction patterns in HNC, providing potential targets for future psychosocial interventions for patients with HNC and their partners.