Le but de cette étude est de cerner, à partir de leur propre point de vue, la trajectoire d’adaptation de conjoints dont l’épouse est atteinte d’un cancer de l’ovaire. Une approche qualitative, la théorisation ancrée, a été utilisée dans le cadre de cette recherche. Les données ont été recueillies à l’aide d'entretiens semi-structurés effectués auprès de neuf conjoints qui accompagnaient leur épouse lors de leurs traitements dans une unité montréalaise ultra-spécialisée de soins pour les cancers gynécologiques. Nos résultats font ressortir qu’une fois passé le choc de l’annonce du diagnostic, nos répondants se ressaisissent et élaborent toute une série de stratégies de protection pour leur épouse et eux-mêmes, puis d’attaque de la maladie. Au bilan, pour eux, le cancer se révèle une expérience « transformante» aux plans personnel, conjugal et social. Les contrastes observés entre nos résultats et ceux des études antérieures, qui insistent sur le désarroi de conjoints, peuvent être expliqués par la prise en charge efficace de la femme par le réseau de la santé, qui valorise le rôle du conjoint et qui l’outille pour accompagner son épouse. S’ajoutent à cela la force du lien conjugal, trempé par les épreuves passées, certains traits de personnalité des conjoints et l'action du réseau de soutien personnel. En regard de la pratique infirmière, notre recherche met en évidence le bien-fondé des politiques soutenant l’intégration des familles dans les plans de soins et les retombées positives d’une approche concertée entre tous les intervenants de la santé. Répéter une telle étude dans d'autres institutions du réseau de la santé permettrait de cerner encore plus finement son impact sur l’adaptation de conjoints à la maladie. / This research focuses on how nine men recall their adaptation trajectory to their spouses’ ovarian cancer. The qualitative analysis made use of the grounded theory approach; semistructured interviews were conducted with husbands accompanying their spouses during their treatments in an ultra-specialized unit for gynaecological cancers in a Montreal hospital. Our results show that after the initial shock initiated by the announcement, the respondents develop a set of strategies, first to protect their wives and themselves, and then to attack the illness. Accompanying their wives through the experience of cancer proves to be, for the husbands, a transformative experience at all levels: personal,conjugal, and social. The perceived efficacy of the health network and its preoccupation with the husband’s caretaker role may explain the sharp contrast we observe between results from the literature, insisting on the husbands’ helplessness in such a context, and our data, which underline their fighting spirit. Other factors identified are the strength of the conjugal link, forged in common ordeals, personality traits of both husbands and wives, and support from their personal network. Concerning nursing practice, this research suggests that the importance and the support given by the health professionals to the family caregivers is of utmost importance for the couple’s quality of life throughout this experience. Besides, the coordination of the health professionals, throughout the women’s illness, is crucial in diminishing the anxiety linked to the cancer diagnosis. The duplication of such a study in other cancer care units would allow a finer analysis of the impact the health network can have on the adaptation of both spouses to illness.

The direct effect of spouse presence during graded exercise testing on anxiety and performance has not been previously delineated. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to (a) ascertain if spouse presence during graded exercise testing affects state anxiety or physiological performance variables, and (b) determine differences in psychological status between cardiac patients and healthy adults.

A divorce as one of the forms of termination of marriage is enacted in all European laws, being defined as abolishment of an existing marriage during the life of the spouses, pronounced by a competent state body, on the grounds stipulated by the law and within the framework of a prescribed procedural process, with effect ex nunc. One of the characteristics of the current European society is a so-called "family crisis". A manifestation of this crisis is a growing number of unmarried couples and, first of all, a continuously growing number of divorces. A divorce as a social situation became at the beginning of the third millennium an ordinary and acceptable issue for an overwhelming majority of the society, being considered to be an accessible, decisive and effective method for resolving disputes and problems in a marriage. In this respect, the current European legislation also leads to the fact that only a small proportion of divorces today ends by settlement between the partners. However, it is certainly unadvisable to overestimate the importance of the institute of marriage. As regards the general opinion, the law on divorce cannot be made so complicated that it would force the spouses to remain in a non-functional and de facto nonexistent union. In general we presume that upon termination of...

Indebtedness of individuals non-entrepreneurs and their subsequent inability to pay their obligations duly and on time was reflected not only in legislation designed to protect consumers but also to law that props up the debtor's financial position and provides him a second chance for a fresh start free of debt. The Insolvency Act passed through development during its efficiency i.e. from 1st August 2008, a considerable development, and according to the number of submitted insolvency proposals it became a legal instrument used by debtors to manage and address solving of their situation. We will be able to assess efficiency of utilisation this notion enabling discharge from debts in the next two or three years, when enough evidence should be available to evaluate the success of approved debt reliefs through the payment schedule. Court decision taking adapted the Insolvency Act also to the possibility of debt relief for spouses who are in most cases engaged in joint commitments under the joint property of spouses. The debt relief for spouses, however, brings a couple of questions and insolvency courts do not approach to proceed it in uniformly way. It is therefore important to prepare major amendment to the Insolvency Act, from which we expect not only the unification of court decisions, as well as...

This qualitative study was designed and conducted to hear the voices of military spouses who chose to live separately from the active duty spouse. The study also sought to identify potential risks due to the separation and protective factors that were used to positively cope with separation. Previous studies have examined risk factors for military spouses as a result of military induced separation such as deployment. However, no study has been conducted regarding separation by choice of the military spouse and active duty service member. The theory of resiliency provided an understanding of the presence of protective factors and resiliency. Data were collected from 8 military spouses, recruited through social media, using semistructured interviews, who provided details of their lived experience of voluntary separation. The study findings indicated that participants who were voluntarily separated from their active duty spouse were unhappy with the separation. All but 1 of the participants in the study experienced separation stressors such as being stressed, overwhelmed, lonely, and sad because to the separation. Negative psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety were experienced by military spouses voluntarily separated 7 months and longer. Social support, such as family, was identified by all participants in the study as a protective factor helping them cope with the separation. The findings of the study provide other military spouses with knowledge on voluntary separation. Additionally, federal and state mental health professionals and policy makers can gain better understanding and knowledge about this population to help foster positive mental health and designed laws to assist military spouses.

<p>This thesis investigates help-seeking and effects of help-seeking on causal attributions for helping (i.e., what people believe caused help or lack of help). Additionally, it examines self-serving and other-serving attributions (i.e., to augment a person's positive sides and diminish the negative ones). Help-seeking was investigated in questionnaires, describing situations where spouses collaborate in doing household chores. A first study showed that women and men report using direct styles (i.e., explicitly verbalising the requests) more often than indirect ones. A second study showed that spouses inaccurately believe that wives in general would report more indirect and less direct styles than husbands in general. Causal attributions for helping were investigated in four studies with different methods, settings, and types of relationships (questionnaires, laboratory experiment; spouses doing chores, students and strangers doing computerized exercises). Consistent support was obtained for a predicted interaction between helping and the clarity of the request for help in determining the attributions. It is suggested that this finding is an effect of people comparing the behavior of one person with their beliefs about how other persons behave (i.e., consensus). Additionally, the findings did not support the claims that people make self-serving attributions and that the latter would be more pronounced among men than women. However, the attributions were other-serving. The thesis gives a novel understanding of everyday life by combining the issues of help-seeking and causal attributions. It also offers a discussion of the previous literature and of theoretical and applied implications of the findings.</p>

<p>The overall aims of this thesis were to prospectively investigate how specific challenges among patients with commonly occurring cancers are related to adaptation and well-being, to predict later well-being using a range of psychosocial aspects and to compare two ways of measuring coping with cancer. This was studied at diagnosis in patients with gastrointestinal cancers and their spouses and at termination of cancer treatment and during follow-up in a heterogeneous group of cancers. At <i>diagnosis,</i> higher levels of psychological distress were accompanied both by more coping attempts and less perceived control over the stressful events. Somatic aspects and Everyday concerns were frequent stressful events. The most frequently used coping strategies were emotion-focused. The Daily Coping Assessment (DCA) rendered a varied picture of ways of handling the stressful events (Study I). When studying coping as a process, the DCA has advantages compared to the commonly used measure MAC, since DCA better separates coping from both the stressful event and outcome. A comparison of the DCA and the MAC rendered differences regarding the usage of coping strategies (Study II). Patients with higher levels of anxiety/depression also had higher discrepancies between attainment and importance for most life values compared to patients with less anxiety/depression. For the patients, but not for the spouses, the discrepancies for several life values along with anxiety and depression decreased over time (Study III). Anxiety/depression at<i> termination of treatment</i> are strong predictors for anxiety/depression and QoL at follow-up. However, other variables like psychiatric history, the bother an event caused, the coping strategy Acceptance, the stressful event Thoughts/affects and emotional and instrumental aspects of social support contributed to the prediction (Study IV). Thus, it is concluded that detailed information regarding specific and frequent situations among cancer patients is possible to reveal and necessary for a better understanding of what influences well-being.</p>

This thesis investigates help-seeking and effects of help-seeking on causal attributions for helping (i.e., what people believe caused help or lack of help). Additionally, it examines self-serving and other-serving attributions (i.e., to augment a person's positive sides and diminish the negative ones). Help-seeking was investigated in questionnaires, describing situations where spouses collaborate in doing household chores. A first study showed that women and men report using direct styles (i.e., explicitly verbalising the requests) more often than indirect ones. A second study showed that spouses inaccurately believe that wives in general would report more indirect and less direct styles than husbands in general. Causal attributions for helping were investigated in four studies with different methods, settings, and types of relationships (questionnaires, laboratory experiment; spouses doing chores, students and strangers doing computerized exercises). Consistent support was obtained for a predicted interaction between helping and the clarity of the request for help in determining the attributions. It is suggested that this finding is an effect of people comparing the behavior of one person with their beliefs about how other persons behave (i.e., consensus). Additionally, the findings did not support the claims that people make self-serving attributions and that the latter would be more pronounced among men than women. However, the attributions were other-serving. The thesis gives a novel understanding of everyday life by combining the issues of help-seeking and causal attributions. It also offers a discussion of the previous literature and of theoretical and applied implications of the findings.

The overall aims of this thesis were to prospectively investigate how specific challenges among patients with commonly occurring cancers are related to adaptation and well-being, to predict later well-being using a range of psychosocial aspects and to compare two ways of measuring coping with cancer. This was studied at diagnosis in patients with gastrointestinal cancers and their spouses and at termination of cancer treatment and during follow-up in a heterogeneous group of cancers. At diagnosis, higher levels of psychological distress were accompanied both by more coping attempts and less perceived control over the stressful events. Somatic aspects and Everyday concerns were frequent stressful events. The most frequently used coping strategies were emotion-focused. The Daily Coping Assessment (DCA) rendered a varied picture of ways of handling the stressful events (Study I). When studying coping as a process, the DCA has advantages compared to the commonly used measure MAC, since DCA better separates coping from both the stressful event and outcome. A comparison of the DCA and the MAC rendered differences regarding the usage of coping strategies (Study II). Patients with higher levels of anxiety/depression also had higher discrepancies between attainment and importance for most life values compared to patients with less anxiety/depression. For the patients, but not for the spouses, the discrepancies for several life values along with anxiety and depression decreased over time (Study III). Anxiety/depression at termination of treatment are strong predictors for anxiety/depression and QoL at follow-up. However, other variables like psychiatric history, the bother an event caused, the coping strategy Acceptance, the stressful event Thoughts/affects and emotional and instrumental aspects of social support contributed to the prediction (Study IV). Thus, it is concluded that detailed information regarding specific and frequent situations among cancer patients is possible to reveal and necessary for a better understanding of what influences well-being.

The paper aims to examine how the wives of men with dementia experience their lives and how they perceive support from the society. The paper also aims to highlight the family care consultants´ work and views on support for families of people with dementia. Three spouses of people with dementia and three family care consultants were interviewed and the results were analyzed using Antonovsky's (1991) three theoretical concepts; comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness that comes from his theory Sense of coherence. The results show that the three wives whose men suffered from dementia spend most of their time, effort and energy on their husbands. They do not have time to think about their own needs and what support they feel they could use for themselves. They do not think about themselves as caregivers, they are spouses. Family care consultants are well aware of the importance of meeting and see the relatives in their lives, and denounces the importance of a support designed individually. Family care consultants understand that the most important and the best support society can provide a family care giver is that their close ones are well taken care of and given good care.