Prospectively Examining the Effects of a Cancer Diagnosis on Patients, Spouses/Partners, and Their Relationship

Patients and their caregivers commonly report positive psychological change following the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, a phenomenon referred to as perceived growth. However, most studies have examined patient and caregiver growth as separate, parallel processes, without considering their dynamic interplay or the shared interpersonal context. Furthermore, previous research is limited by cross-sectional designs that use retrospective self-report measures to capture perceived change following cancer, rather than prospective designs to capture actual, measured changes in positive traits such as character strengths (i.e., character growth). This chapter discusses the challenges involved in examining post-traumatic growth in cancer patient populations and the advantages of incorporating a dyadic process approach as opposed to solely focusing on individual-level change. A dyadic process approach will permit examination of whether disclosure, support, empathy, and cognitive processing operate as mechanisms of character growth and will discuss the need for longitudinal data to fully examine post-traumatic growth as a dyadic outcome. To further elaborate on this dyadic approach, the authors propose an expanded theoretical model to delineate the intrapersonal and shared dyadic processes that underlie character and couple growth among cancer patients and caregivers.