A couples intervention for patients facing advanced cancer and their spouse caregivers: outcomes of a pilot study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a couples intervention in improving marital functioning in advanced cancer patients and their spouse caregivers. A secondary objective was to determine its impact on other symptoms of psychosocial distress and its feasibility and acceptability as a clinical intervention. METHODS: Using a one-arm pre- and post-intervention prospective design, 16 couples were provided 8 weekly sessions of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, modified and manualized for the cancer population. Subjects' marital functioning (Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale [RDAS]), symptoms of depression (Beck Depression Inventory-II [BDI-II]), and hopelessness (Beck Hopelessness Scale) were assessed through self-report at T0 (baseline), T1 (after four sessions), T2 (after eight sessions), and T3 (3 months post-intervention follow-up). RESULTS: RDAS scores improved from T0 to T2, with 87.5% of the couples showing some improvement (0.5-5 points) or significant improvement (>5 points) in marital functioning and 68.8% scoring in the non-distressed range (>or=48 RDAS). At T3, 60% of the couples (n=15) continued to score in the non-distressed range on the RDAS. BDI-II scores were significantly higher for patients than for caregivers. There was a significant reduction in the mean BDI-II score from T0 to T3 in all subjects (n=30). This reduction was more significant for the patients (n=15). CONCLUSIONS: Providing support to couples at this challenging time may result in improved marital functioning and an opportunity for relational growth during end-stage cancer. This study serves as the first step in the development of an empirically validated intervention for couples.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".