 Predictors of family anxiety in the weeks before bereavementIrene Higginson and Patricia Priest Social Science & Medicine, 1996, vol. 43, issue 11, 1621-1625 Abstract: There has been little research to date on the factors which predict high anxiety in family members or carers before bereavement. Our study used data on 302 patients for whom the family's anxiety had been recorded by cancer palliative care teams in the last weeks of the patient's life. Variables known at the time of the patient's referral to the teams were entered into a discriminant analysis. A predictive function with a sensitivity of 0.75 and a specificity of 0.51 identified those families whose anxiety was rated as severe (3-4 on a scale of 0-4) during the month before the patient's death. Important predictors were: whether the family member was a spouse, a diagnosis of breast cancer, young age, the time from diagnosis and low patient mobility. There was a small significant correlation between a longer time in palliative care and lower family anxiety. The predictive model could be used by oncologists to identify cases where greater psychological support will be needed. Keywords: bereavement; palliative; care; family; anxiety; hospice; predictor (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:43:y:1996:i:11:p:1621-1625 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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