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This chapter discusses the role of intimate partners in psychosocial adaptation to cancer, in conjunction with the key challenges to doing research in this area. Focusing on a review of recent empirical studies addressing the role of intimate relationships in adaptation, the authors divide their review into three sections. The first focuses on traditional approaches to understanding intimate relationships and cancer through examination of the role of social support. The second centers on nontraditional approaches focusing on the role of relationship processes. The third focuses on psychological interventions that include significant others.

This chapter examines the provision of psychosocial care in the palliative care setting in Great Britain. It analyses the facts behind the increasing understanding that while a level of psychological distress is understandably associated with the diagnosis of cancer there is also a high level of psychiatric morbidity that, if treated, leads to an improvement in a person's state of mind and their quality of life. It suggests that palliative care should address the high incidence of psychological morbidity by providing screening methods and tool that may be used for the detection and management of psychological disorders.

This chapter describes the evidence linking mental illness and CHD, the associations between mental illness and risk factors for CHD, and the potential mechanisms through which mental illness may affect the heart. There is evidence that (a) depression is an independent predictor of CHD morbidity and mortality; (b) exhaustion is a predictor in the eighteen months before cardiac events; (c) phobic anxiety predicts sudden cardiac death; and (d) depression post-myocardial infarction (MI) predicts increased mortality rates.

This chapter analyses gender differences in health and social factors in the period covered by the Level-of-Living Survey (LNU) (1968–2000). It aims to analyse whether there have been any changes in gender differences in musculoskeletal pain and psychological distress during 1968–2000 and, if so, whether there have also been changes in the social factors that contribute to gender differences in the two health outcomes. It investigates whether women's massive entry into the labour market has led to a narrowing or a widening of gender differences in musculoskeletal pain and psychological distress.

Citizens in societies in conflict deal with daily exposure to war-related events. The stress and fear engendered by these events can play a critical role in determining how individual citizens perceive potential threats and in turn impact their political decisions regarding the conflict– namely, support for compromise and tolerance or militancy and exclusion. It is thus critical to examine this linkage between stress, threat perception and political attitudes in the context of protracted conflicts. This chapter proposes a stress-based model to help understand the political outcomes of exposure to terrorism and political violence. According to the model, there are three basic components in the causal chain leading to political outcomes: exposure to terrorism and political violence, stress, and threat perception. Through an extensive review of contemporary literature on political psychology in conflict zones, we examine these components, their buffers, the central role played by fear in this context and the fundamental importance of conducting research in war and conflict zones despite the objective methodological issues, in order to further our understanding of the unique psychological and political consequences for civilian populations of exposure to prolonged conflict environments. The current model, although examined in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict context, is widely applicable for other conflict zones around the world, and as such offers a strong basis for therapy, intervention and conflict resolution.

This chapter aims to introduce the definitions and the theoretical and practical concepts of the established psychotherapeutic approaches and to present their clinical relevance and associated scientific evidence for the palliative care setting. It explains that psychotherapy focuses on issues that can be of help for psychologically distressed patients with a limited life expectancy. It also discusses the relational and technical aspects of psychotherapy and the proposed approaches for integrating psychotherapy in palliative care.

When alienists and nerve specialists set themselves to cure patients incapacitated by nervous breakdown, the treatments they designed reflected their awareness that mind and body needed to be healed together. Although there is no single prescription for the care of shattered nerves, virtually all of the therapeutic methods employed during the Victorian and Edwardian decades sought to address both somatic and psychological distress, restoring the depleted supplies of nerve force that precipitated the collapse and calming whatever form of mental strain that had exacerbated it. Throughout Victoria's reign, most medical men relied on drugs during some stage of a nervous patient's treatment. However, Victorian and Edwardian doctors had no idea why some forms of therapy worked well on some depressed patients and had no effect, or a highly detrimental one, on others.

This chapter discusses the social and psychological issues for patients with advanced breast cancer. These issues may accompany the diagnosis and treatment of advanced breast cancer, and are both varied and complex. The concepts of psychiatric morbidity and psychological distress are introduced in the first section, while the rest of the chapter looks at screening for depression and the three main interventions for depression. The factors involved in the decision-making process and the possible effects of treatment on a patient are discussed as well.

Bach flower remedies are a form of ‘energy’ or ‘vibrational’ medicine, focused on the emotional level. Besides the well-known combination Rescue™ Remedy, this system comprises thirty-eight individual essences, mostly derived from plants and trees that grow wild in England and Wales. Discovered in the 1930s, these remedies have become popular all over the world as an aid to managing psychological distress, including that associated with cancer. The Bach system is a good example of a holistic therapy. It treats the person and not the disease, encourages self-responsibility for healing, and can safely be combined with other treatments. Instead of dwelling only on what is wrong with people, it emphasises the idea that illness can be a learning experience and even a transformative one. This chapter describes the life and work of Dr. Edward Bach, the Bach flower remedies and their mode of action, efficacy, indications in the cancer care setting, contra-indications, precautions, limitations, and levels of treatment.

This chapter describes the remigrant experience through an examination of the subtractive identity profile. The Cultural Identity Model suggests that one common response to cultural transition is adaptation and a shift in identity away from one's home culture attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. It explains that the “subtractive” identity profile is adopted by individuals who experience the shift most saliently once they return to their homeland and endure great psychological distress. Emotionally, subtractive identity is characterized by depression, anxiety, and displacement. Cognitively, those with a subtractive profile perceive themselves as dissimilar from their compatriots in their essential values, beliefs, interpretations of others' behavior, and self-definition; they frequently experience isolation and bewilderment.

This chapter examines the management of cystic fibrosis, a multisystem disorder characterised by chronic airway infection, malnutrition, and premature death. Management of late-stage disease may be complex and demanding, particularly for relatives, carers, and healthcare staff, to whom a patient may have become well known over many years. Some of the complications associated with cystic fibrosis that need a supportive care approach from a relatively early disease stage include respiratory failure, nutritional depletion, and psychological distress.