Qualidade de vida e estratégias de coping dos pacientes oncológicos

Tese de mestrado integrado em Psicologia (Psicologia Clínica da Saúde - Núcleo de Psicologia da Saúde e da Doença), apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa através da Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, 2008Este estudo pretendeu conhecer as estratégias de coping (confronto) utilizadaspelos doentes oncológicos que são seguidos na Clínica da Dor do IPOLFG e como estaspoderão influenciar a sua qualidade de vida relacionada com a saúde e bem-estar global.De acordo com os objectivos de investigação, foram seleccionados os seguintesinstrumentos; o FACT-G, versão 4 (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy General), (Cella e col., 1993); a Escala Reduzida de Ajustamento Mental ao Cancro MiniMAC, (Watson et al., 1988) e a Escala Coping With Health Injuries and ProblemsScale CHIP (Endler e Parker, 1998). Nesta investigação participaram 37 pacientesoncológicos.Os resultados obtidos na escala CHIP revelaram que os estilos de confronto maisutilizados pela população em estudo são o Coping Instrumental, o Coping Distractivo eo Coping Paliativo. Salienta-se também o facto que estes pacientes apresentam um valorsuperior na dimensão de Bem-Estar Social/Familiar da Qualidade de Vida, indicandoque o suporte social fornecido pela família e amigos poderá ser outro recurso de copingutilizado por esta amostra para diminuir a situação de crise manifestada. Na escalaMiniMac as estratégias mais utilizadas para fazer face à doença, são o Fatalismo, oEvitamento Cognitivo e o Espírito de Luta. Também se verificou que os pacientes queapresentam um nível de distress menor apresentam um nível de qualidade de vida ebem-estar mais positivo.O trabalho do psicólogo da saúde e da doença é importante a nível do trabalhocom a dor uma vez que procura maximizar a auto-eficácia, autonomia e auto-controlodo doente oncológico. Este trabalho conjunto entre psicólogo e utente pode fortalecer oseu espírito de luta e confronto com o processo e percurso da doença. Assim, é possívelviabilizar a redução dos níveis de fatalismo e evitamento cognitivo, tão associados a umconfronto desadequado com a dor. O trabalho conjunto psicólogo/doente/ família poderá permitir o desenvolvimento de formas de combater o mal-estar funcional resultado evidenciado neste estudo como tendo indicies elevados aumentando assimoutros domínios vivenciais associados sobretudo ao bem-estar físico, emocional e sóciofamiliar.Optimizando estas áreas, poder-se-à constatar uma melhoria na qualidade devida destes doentes, suas famílias e cuidadores principais.The present study was conducted to determine how the Coping Strategies of asample of cancer patients being treated at The Pain Clinic, IPOLFG, may influence theirHealth-Related Quality of Life and sense of Well-Being.In accordance with the established objectives of the present investigation, thefollowing instruments were chosen; FACT-G, version 4 (Functional Assessment ofCancer Therapy General), (Cella et al., 1993); The Mini-Mental Adjustment to CancerScale MiniMAC, (Watson et al., 1988) and The Coping With Health Injuries andProblems Scale CHIP (Endler e Parker, 1998).Results obtained on the CHIP scale indicated higher levels of Instrumental,Distraction and Palliative Coping Strategies. Higher levels of Social/Family RelatedWell-Being were shown to be prominent, indicating that the use of social and familysupport could be another coping strategy/resource to diminish the crisis situation whichthese patients currently face. Regarding the MiniMAC scale, it was found that thecoping strategies most utilized, were Fatalism, Fighting Spirit and Cognitive Avoidance.In addition, it was found that patients manifesting lower levels of distressdemonstrated positive levels of quality of life and well-being.The Health Psychologist's role in pain management is crucial to help CancerPatients optimally manage their crises situation, ultimately stimulating a fightingspirit attitude throughout the course of the disease and reducing levels of fatalism and cognitive avoidance associated with mal-adaptive forms of Coping with Cancer.A joint treatment approach including psychologist, patient and family will be mosteffective to improve the functional-well being of these patients (reported as very low inthe current sample), ultimately enhancing other domains of well-being, such as thephysical, emotional and social well-being. By enhancing these domains, and promotingself-efficacy, a better quality of life will be viable to these patients, their families andtheir health care providers

Is a Rose Always a Rose Always a Rose?

Some of the questions I attempt to deal with are as follows: What does it mean to mean something? How does meaning happen? What do we really mean when we say that something means something? Can there be meaning without a mind? Is meaning something fixed or is it more like an unstable flux? How do concepts affect or determine the way we perceive the world? Aren’t metaphor, metonymy and other figures of speech very natural occurrences when meaning is understood more as an unstable flux than as something fixed and permanent? Do innate ideas or concepts exist? Or is it rather that we have innate ways of creating concepts? How do we (re) create concepts? How do concepts relate to meaning? How do concepts integrate and relate so as to create more complex meanings at higher levels? And how do they relate to grammar? Is grammar a set of rules or is it rather a set of conventions? How does grammar interact with the structures of our concepts

Nonuniformly Loaded Stack of Antiplane Shear Cracks in One-Dimensional Piezoelectric Quasicrystals

Representations in a closed form are derived, using an extension to the method of dislocation layers, for the phonon and phason stress and electric displacement components in the deformation of one-dimensional piezoelectric quasicrystals by a nonuniformly loaded stack of parallel antiplane shear cracks. Their dependence upon the polar angle in the region close to the tip of a crack is deduced, and the field intensity factors then follow. These exhibit that the phenomenon of crack shielding is dependent upon the relative spacing of the cracks. The analogous analyses, that have not been given previously, involving non-piezoelectric or non-quasicrystalline or simply elastic materials can be straightforwardly considered as special cases. Even when the loading is uniform and the crack is embedded in a purely elastic isotropic solid, no explicit representations have been available before for the components of the field at points other than directly ahead of a crack. Typical numerical results are graphically displayed

Row of shear cracks moving in one-dimensional hexagonal quasicrystalline materials

NoRepresentations for the stress fields created around an infinite row of collinear, antiplane shear cracks moving within one-dimensional hexagonal quasicrystals, and the resulting stress intensity factors and the J-integral, are determined in closed-form and discussed, using an extended method of dislocation layers. The solutions for a finite quasicrystalline plate containing a single moving crack and a plate with a moving edge crack are also provided by this analysis. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Photography in engineering

xv, 276 p.; 24 cm

Stiffness of annular bonded rubber flanged bushes.

NoClosed-form expressions are derived for the torsional stiffness, radial stiffness and tilting stiffness of annular rubber flanged bushes of finite length in three principal modes of deformation, based upon the classical theory of elasticity. Illustrative numerical results are deduced with realistic physical data of typical flanged bushes