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Matters of the heart : the dyadic effects of psychological resilience and coping on psychological distress and relationship satisfaction among couples undergoing open heart surgery

University of British Columbia

Cardiac surgeries are among the most commonly performed surgical interventions worldwide. Despite goals of improved survival and enhanced quality of life, the process of undergoing cardiac surgery is physically and psychologically demanding. Elevated levels of psychological distress and relationship strain have been documented in both cardiac surgery patients and their spouses prior to undergoing cardiac surgery. Psychological resilience is a well-established protective factor for individuals facing adversity. Yet, research on resilience in the context of dyads, as well as research that investigates how and why psychological resilience helps individuals and couples adapt to stressful situations is scarce. The overarching goal of the current research was to investigate the extent to which psychological resilience is related to emotional and relationship outcomes in patients scheduled for open heart surgery and their spouses. A sample of 71 patient-spouse dyads were recruited and each participant completed a battery of standardized psychosocial questionnaires. Using actor-partner interdependence models, actor effects emerged, suggesting that resilience may serve as a protective factor against psychological distress and relationship strain among patients as well as their spouses. Partner effects were also identified, suggesting that patient resilience may have implications for spouse levels of relationship satisfaction. A secondary goal of the current research was to assess the extent to which resilience influences outcomes through ways of adaptive coping (i.e., collaboratively coping to manage stress) and maladaptive coping (i.e., catastrophizing pain). Using actor-partner interdependence mediation models it was found that the extent to which couples collaborated to manage stressors together mediated the relationship between their own resilience and their own sense of relationship satisfaction. As well, a partner effect emerged whereby greater psychological resilience in the patient was associated with greater relationship satisfaction in the spouse via higher levels of the spouse’s common dyadic coping. Additionally, psychological resilience was related to lower psychological distress for both patients and their spouses, and this was explained in part by the fact that they engaged in lower levels of pain catastrophizing. The theoretical and clinical implications of this research are expanded upon, including the potential utility of individual and couples rehabilitation prior to cardiac surgery.

Text

2020-10-06

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/76258

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/