• Asian Oncology Nursing
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.289-296
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• 2012

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to find the levels of distress and quality of life of breast cancer survivors in Korea and to identify relationship between distress and quality of life. Methods: The data were collected from 122 breast cancer survivors in 2009. To measure the distress and quality of life, the 'Distress Thermometer and Problem List' and the 'Functional Assessment Cancer Therapy-Breast' were used respectively. Results: The mean score of distress was 4.77 (${\pm}2.35$) and 63.1% of the subjects reported a distress score of 4 or more, indicating a clinically significant level of distress. Among these, the most frequently reported problem area was emotion, followed by family. The mean score of the quality of life was 88.22 (${\pm}18.41$), signifying 6.13 out of 10. The levels of distress and the quality of life were negatively correlated (r=-.38, p<.001). Conclusion: The results of the study indicate that distress is prevalent in Korean breast cancer survivors and the distress is related negatively with their quality of life. Thus oncology professionals continuously need to assess distress of breast cancer survivors and to provide appropriate psychosocial interventions to improve their quality of life.

• Journal of Digestive Cancer Research
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2023

Distress in patients with digestive cancers can considerably impact not only their treatment adherence but also their health-related quality of life. Early distress recognition in patients, appropriate interventions by the oncology team, or referral to mental health professionals, can enhance the treatment efficiency. This review aims to provide an overview of distress evaluation and its management in patients with cancer, specifically digestive cancers, and to address the psychological responses and distress that occur in those patients during treatment. Furthermore, the review will introduce possible psychological interventions for patients with digestive cancers who experience significant distress, depending on the duration and planning of the treatment.

• Journal of Oral Medicine and Pain
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.56-64
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• 2020

Purpose: Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) is a mosaic of clinical signs and symptoms that can be regarded as a set of phenotypes that are affected by various factors including pain sensitivity, pain disability, sleep and psychological functioning. The aims of this study were to evaluate association of pain experience, sleep quality and psychological distress with different phenotypes of TMD patients. Methods: This retrospective study included a cohort (n=1,858; 63.8% for female, mean age=34.9±15.9 years) of patients with TMD. A set of self-administered questionnaires concerning pain interference (Brief Pain Inventory), pain disability (Graded Chronic Pain Scale), sleep quality (Pittsburg Sleep Questionnaire Index), psychological distress (Symptom Checklist-90 revised), and pain catastrophizing (Pain Catastrophizing Scale) were administered to all participants at the first consultation. All TMD patients were classified into four groups including TMD with internal derangement without pain (TMD_ID, n=370), TMD with joint pain (TMD_J, n=571), TMD with muscle pain (TMD_M, n=541) and TMD with muscle-joint combined pain (TMD_MJ, n=376). Results: The female ratio was particularly high in the group with TMD_MJ (p=0.001). The patients with muscle pain and both muscle and joint pain had longer symptom duration (p=0.004) and presented significantly higher scores in pain experience (p<0.001), subjective sleep quality (p<0.001), pain catastrophizing (p<0.001) and psychological distress (p<0.05) except for paranoid-ideation than the groups with only joint problems. Conclusions: The results of this study highlight the importance of multi-dimensional approach that consider pain disability, sleep quality, and psychological functioning in the management of TMD with muscle component. This study would contribute to a better understanding of interaction between heterogeneous TMD and multiple risk factors in order to build tailored treatment based on different phenotypes.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.1313-1318
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• 2007

The objective of this study was to examine the psychological distress in women with breast cancer. Subjects were 25 women with breast cancer and 25 healthy women, who were recruited from January 2005 to September 2006 at Dunsan oriental hospital of Daejeon university. Psychological distress were assessed using SCL-90-R(Symptom-Check-List-90-Revised), and diagnosis of sasang constitution was done by QSCCII (Ousestionnare for Sasang Constitution Classification II). Psychological distress were significantly showed in breast cancer patients compared with healthy women. They are associated with unmarried or divorced women, lower level of education, and longer time lapse after diagnosis. Especially, phobic anxiety was significantly higher in Soeumin than Taeumin and Soyangin. These results lead us to the conclusion that it is necessary to psychological stabilization by various method in care program of breast cancer.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.41-48
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• 2014

Purpose - This study aims to investigate a solution to reduce the negative reactions arising from the performance of duties or the job distress of workers in the service industry, because human resource statistics regarding workers in the service sector have been unreported, while concerns regarding exposure to emotional exertion and poor working conditions have been continuously increasing. Research design, data, and methodology - This study specifically focused on workers in highway service areas. It differs from previous studies because it involves the perspective of the person-organization fit and regards workers' cognition of leaders through the psychological distance toward the leader and the contact frequency between workers and leaders within the framework of the leader-individual fit. Moreover, this study highlights the role of the self-leadership of workers as an important factor that becomes manifested in the individual-level fit to the organization. Hence, this study investigates whether the positive role of the above factors, in turn, could reduce job distress. Workers from highway service areas in Gyeonggi-do province provided data; 141 valid questionnaires are collected. SPSS 19.0 and AMOS 19.0 were used to test the reliability and validity of constructs. Simple regression, multiple regression, and 3 step mediation tests were used to test the hypotheses after the correlation tests. Results - Results indicated that leader-member contact frequency and psychological distance have negative effects on job distress but positive effects on self-leadership. A mediation test revealed that self-leadership, in the relationships between contact frequency and job distress and between psychological distance and job distress, resulted in partial mediation and full mediation, respectively. Conclusions - The result can be understood through two different possible explanations. First, service area workers generally possess a positive perspective toward their leaders. This can be interpreted to mean that increased contact frequency and psychological distance would be considered as supports from the leader, rather than intrusive controls or management schemes. Therefore, the management in highway service areas should invest efforts in increasing contact frequency as well as maximizing psychological similarities by adopting the viewpoints of workers in terms of moral and ethical management, to reduce the workers' job distress. The results relating to self-leadership also indicate that increased contact frequency must be accompanied by intentions for the effective promotion of workers' self-leadership. It also signifies the necessity of a strategic approach by leaders to induce workers to perceive "in-group"ness as suggested both by the similarity-attraction theory and by the social identity theory. In addition, the results of the mediation test of self-leadership indicate that because workers' self-leadership activates upon increased contact frequency by the leader, it should not be a means of control and should not be utilized only from the perspective of management. It is also suggested that strategies such as transfer of authority could have a positive effect in promoting the expansion of self-influence from workers.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.661-670
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• 2015

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the mediation of psychological distress in the relationship between disturbance in ADL from chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy and quality of life in order to provide a basis for planning nursing interventions to improve the quality of life in cancer patients. Methods: A purposive sample of 130 patients treated with chemotherapy were recruited in the cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected using self-report questionnaires. The instruments were the Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Assessment Tool (CIPNAT), Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS), and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-General (FACT-G). Results: The mean score for disturbance in ADL from chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy was 3.30. Overall quality of life was 2.48. The mean score was 1.04 for psychological distress. The prevalence was 35.4% for anxiety and 47.7% for depression. There were significant correlations among the three variables, disturbance in ADL from chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy, psychosocial distress, and quality of life. Psychosocial distress had a complete mediating effect (${\beta}$= -.74, p <.001) in the relationship between disturbance in ADL from chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy and quality of life (Sobel test: Z= -6.11, p <.001). Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, nursing intervention programs focusing on disturbance of ADL management, and decrease of psychological distress are highly recommended to improve quality of life in cancer patients.

• The Korean Journal of Woman Psychology
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.427-446
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• 2009

This study examined the possible mediating effects of emotion-focused coping and perceived efficacy on the relation between evaluative concern perfectionism and psychological distress. A convenience sample of 241 university students (129 men and 112 women) was employed. Analyses of the structural model for the full sample yielded evidence of good fit. The results support the indirect pathways of evaluative concern perfectionism to psychological distress through emotion-focused coping and perceived efficacy. About 40% of variance in psychological distress was accounted for by evaluative concern perfectionism, emotion-focused coping and perceived efficacy. In addition, the fully mediated model produced good fit to the data across gender. However, there were no differences in structural paths as a function of gender. Implications for counseling practice and future research are discussed.

• Journal of Families and Better Life
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.263-276
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• 1996

The purpose of this study is to explore various environmental factors that explain parenting practices. Those factors considered are stress and characteristics of single-mother/child together with psychological distress experienced by the single mother. A total of 285 poor single mothers with a child attending elementary school or junior high school completed a structured questionaire. The relationships among the variables were analyzed by the path analysis. The results showed that poor single mothers rely on affectiv $e^portive involvement more frequently then punitive/inconsistent discipline. It is also confirmed that the enviromental factors such as financial stress living environmental stress and job status play important roles in determining the quality of parenting practices with the mediating role of psychological distress.ss.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.171-176
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• 2016

Background: Much has been done to examine the psychological impact of cancer treatment, but it remains unclear to what extent anxiety and depression is related to symptom prevalence. The present study concerned the characteristics and frequency of distress as related to symptom prevalence in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy in Malaysia. Materials and Methods: Participants were 303 consecutive adult cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy in an academic medical center. The short form Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale (MSAS-SF), which covers three domains of symptoms (global distress, physical- and psychological symptoms) was used to cross-sectionally measure symptom frequency and associated distress via self-reporting. One-way ANOVA and t-tests were used to test mean differences among MSAS-SF subscale scores. Results: Complete data were available for 303 patients. The mean number of symptoms was 14.5. The five most prevalent were fatigue, dry mouth, hair loss, drowsiness and lack of appetite. Overall, symptom burden and frequency were higher than in other published MSAS-SF studies. Higher symptom frequency was also found to be significantly related to greater distress in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Conclusions: Patients undergoing chemotherapy suffer from multiple physical and psychological symptoms. Better symptom control or palliative care is needed. Greater frequency of reported symptoms may also indicate a subconscious bid by patients for care and reassurance - thus tailored intervention to manage distress should be offered.

• Journal of Korean Public Health Nursing
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.582-593
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• 2015

Purpose: This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of a self-management program on patients with thyroid cancer, particularly during the time of waiting for surgery after cancer diagnosis. Psychological distress, biological responses of immune cell counts, and quality of life were the variables of this study. Methods: One group pre-post test design was used with the nature of a pilot study. Ten newly diagnosed thyroid cancer patients were recruited through physicians' referrals. After drop out of 4 participants, final data were collected from six participants. Small group technique, a one and half hour-session per week for one month (total 4 sessions, 6 hours) was used. Relaxation techniques, meditation training, and strategies to reduce distress were provided by researchers. Standardized questionnaires and an established bio-assay were used for collection of data. Results: Participants showed significant lowering of psychological distress (p<.05) and improvement in global quality of life (p<.05). Biological responses of immune cell counts did not show statistical significance. Conclusion: The self-management program may reduce psychological distress and improve quality of life of patients with thyroid cancer between the time of diagnosis and surgery. The self-management program would be a valuable approach for patients with an unexpected cancer diagnosis to prepare for their disease experience in a community setting.