Benefit Finding in Cardiac Patients: Relationships with Emotional Well-Being and Resources after Controlling for Physical Functional Impairment

Abstract

Benefit finding (BF) is defined as the individual's perception of positive change as a result of coping with an adverse life event. The beneficial effects of BF on well-being could be because BF favors the improvement of resources like self-efficacy, social support and effective coping. The main objective of this longitudinal 8 week study was to explore, in a sample of cardiac patients (n = 51), the combined contribution of BF and these resources to the positive affect. Moreover, we wanted to check whether these resources were derived from BF or, on the contrary, these resources were antecedents of BF. Results showed that after controlling for functional capacity, only effective coping could predict the positive affect at Time 1 (β = .32, p < .05), while the BF predicted it at Time 2 (β = .23, p< .001). Only social support predicted BF (β = .26, p < .05), but not the opposite. We discussed the desirability of promoting these processes to improve the emotional state of cardiac patients.

Perceived posttraumatic growth in cardiac patients: A systematic scoping review

“…Of the cardiac conditions studied, myocardial infarction was the most common. Other studies focused on a class of cardiac conditions, such as acute coronary syndrome (Bluvstein et al, 2013), or several classes of cardiac conditions or events (Karademas et al, 2010;Leung et al, 2012;Sanjuán et al, 2016). Two studies included a broader range of patients admitted for cardiac surgery (Ai et al, 2012;Kearns et al, 2019).…”

Benefit Finding and Related Factors of Patients with Early-Stage Cancer in China

“…Gardner’s research [ 15 ] showed that multiple treatment and disease recurrence were negatively correlated with BF, indicating that the more the disease relapses, the lower BF will be. In addition, positive and effective coping styles can increase BF [ 21 ]. The reason for this may be that positive coping style can mobilize personal and social resources so as to actively and effectively deal with stressors, in turn promoting BF.…”

Coping with coronavirus disease 2019: Relationships between coping strategies, benefit finding and well‐being

“…(2008) reported a stable level of well‐being among adults in Hong Kong after SARS, as compared to 1 year before the SARS outbreak. Prior studies have reported that protective factors, such as optimism (Olson et al., 2014), benefit finding (Sanjuán et al., 2016) and adaptive coping strategies (Main et al., 2011), help individuals maintain normal levels of well‐being during epidemics and other stressful situations.…”

“…Studies have referred to these positive changes by various names, such as ‘benefit finding’, ‘posttraumatic growth’, ‘perceived growth’ and ‘stress‐related growth’ (Helgeson et al., 2006; Pakenham & Cox, 2018). Benefit finding refers to the positive changes resulting from adversities or traumatic events (Helgeson et al., 2006) and is related to higher levels of well‐being (Jones et al., 2018; Langston et al., 2018; Sanjuán et al., 2016).…”

“…In a longitudinal study, Sanjuán et al. (2016) found that while effective coping only contributed to positive affect at Time 1, benefit finding only contributed to positive affect at Time 2, suggesting that with the passage of time, benefit finding is more closely related to well‐being than effective coping strategies. Furthermore, a study among youth caregivers in a parental illness context reported that benefit finding mediated the relationship between social support and life satisfaction as well that between social support and positive affect (Pakenham & Cox, 2018).…”