In health and disease. Distress, dyadic coping and locus of control as screening variables for the psychological intervention with couples facing a diagnosis of cancer

In their life cycle a couple have to cope with different events; an oncological disease is amongst the possible negative events that may arise. The diagnosis forces the partners to reach a new relational balance and when they fail to reorganise they could be helped by a psychotherapist. Using three psychological constructs, patient’s distress, dyadic coping and patient’s locus of control we have investigated how a couple faces a cancer diagnosis and what kind of support can be given by therapist; the sample consisted in 25 couples, aged from 35 to 60 years who had received a cancer diagnosis within the previous 2/3 months. We used three self-report tests: the Psychological Distress Inventory, the Dyadic Coping Inventory and the scale C of Multidimensional Health Locus of Control. The results indicate that the psychological intervention is particularly suggested not when the individual patient’s distress is elevated but when it is associated with a patient’s internal or “powerful others” locus of control and the couple’s difficulty to cope together with the disease. In fact a psychological intervention is necessary and useful only when the quality of patient’s relational context doesn’t help him/her to deal with his/her distress, in spite of the intensity it might reach. In all instances, the aim of any interventions, be psychotherapeutic or supporting, should be to activate and empower the couple as one of the most useful tools that partners could use to cope with the disease