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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2002

Life values before versus after a breast cancer diagnosis.

The main aim of this study was to investigate whether women's life values change with a breast cancer diagnosis. In addition, associations between life values and anxiety/depression ratings were investigated. Life value changes were prospectively studied in 517 women recalled for further examination after attending mammographic screening, 38 of whom were diagnosed with primary breast cancer. Life values were assessed by a study-specific version of a life value questionnaire, including ratings of the perceived attainment and importance of seven life value dimensions. Three months after being recalled, women diagnosed with primary breast cancer reported a reduction of the attainment and the importance of Health. In addition, these women reported changes in the perceived importance of Responsibility and Involvement. High levels of anxiety and depression in particular were associated with large discrepancies between attainment and importance for some life values. This suggests that changes in the perceived importance of some life values may constitute one part of women's psychological adaptation to a breast cancer diagnosis.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2003

Attainment and importance of life values among patients with primary breast cancer.

The main aims of this study were to investigate the extent to which women with recently diagnosed primary breast cancer (N = 29) and matched control subjects without cancer (N = 29) differ in perceived attainment and importance of life values and to study prospectively life value ratings during 1 year in a large group of recent attendees at mammography screening (N = 706). Life values were assessed by a study-specific version of a life value questionnaire, including ratings of the perceived attainment and importance of seven life value dimensions. Women with a recent diagnosis of primary breast cancer were found to attribute significantly more importance to positive relations than healthy controls. No other differences between these groups were found regarding the attainment or importance of life values. Perceptions of life values were found to vary as a function of age, marital or cohabitation status, and parenthood, and to be stable over a 9-month period in screening attendees. The implications of the current findings for the understanding of women's psychological adaptation to breast cancer are discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Discrepancies between attainment and importance of life values and anxiety and depression in gastrointestinal cancer patients and their spouses.

Patients' satisfaction with life, viewed in terms of the discrepancy between the perceived attainment and subjective importance of various life values, is a less often studied phenomenon for understanding the psychological adaptation in cancer patients. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the relation between the degree of attainment and importance of life values on the one hand, and anxiety and depression, on the other. A consecutive series of 85 newly diagnosed patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, 52 potentially cured and 33 with an advanced disease, and 26 spouses to the patients with an advanced disease participated. The patients and spouses of non-cured patients filled out questionnaires twice, close to the diagnosis and after 1 (non-cured patients) or 3 months. Overall, large discrepancies between the perceived attainment and importance of life values were associated with high anxiety and depression. For the patients (both cured and non-cured), the discrepancies decreased for several life values over time, as did anxiety and depression. For the spouses of the non-cured patients, there was no decrease either for life value discrepancies or for anxiety/depression. This suggests that patients, in contrast to their spouses, strive to achieve small discrepancies between the perceived attainment and importance of life values, as part of their adjustment to serious diseases, e.g. cancer.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Life values, resuscitation preferences, and the applicability of living wills in an older population.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether life values are related to resuscitation preferences and living will completion in an older population and to assess beliefs about the applicability of living wills. DESIGN: Individual structured interviews. SETTING: An independent retirement community. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred thirty-two subjects older than 63 years of age. MEASUREMENTS: Resuscitation preferences were elicited in five hypothetical scenarios. Subjects with living wills were asked whether their living will would play a role in the scenarios. Subjects rated the importance of 13 life value statements. RESULTS: The percentage of subjects desiring CPR in each scenario was as follows: current condition (66%); acute illness (33%); terminal disease (8%); functional impairment (8%); and dementia (7%). The percentage of those with a living will who thought their living wills would play a role in the scenarios was as follows: acute illness (84%); terminal disease (93%); functional impairment with intact cognition (66%); and dementia (91%). Factor analysis of the life value statements revealed five meaningful factors: quality of life; capacity/autonomy; family relations; physical comfort; and treatment philosophy. Multiple correlations were found between four of five life value factors and hypothetical resuscitation preferences or the presence of a living will. CONCLUSION: Subjects misinterpreted the applicability of living wills in nonterminal illness scenarios. A relationship between life values and resuscitation preferences was noted, which emphasizes the importance of eliciting and including life values when discussing advance directives.

Aged↗
PubMed1997

Descriptions of suffering in connection with life values. Healthy individuals' reflections in interviews.

Nine semistructured interviews with attendant questions were conducted with the purpose of elucidating how healthy individuals describe suffering and life values in their reflections upon active euthanasia. In order to find the intended meaning in utterances, the interviews were interpreted step by step. The point of departure was the following question: What expressions of suffering and what expressions of life values can be found in the text? A connection was found between the interviewees' descriptions of suffering and life values in their reflections upon active euthanasia. The interviewees who considered close relations to be a value of life expressed suffering as dependence, compassion, violation, abandonment and feelings of guilt, while those to whom health was a value of life expressed suffering as torment, dependence, physical pain, feebleness, hopelessness and dying. Those who saw autonomy as a value of life expressed suffering as dependence and violation and those to whom doing good was a value of life expressed suffering as compassion. When organizing health care and deciding about the response to suffering, it seems important to strive for a response built upon the individual patient's description of suffering and life values.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Importance and attainment of life values among disabled and non-disabled people.

How do disabled persons evaluate their life situation? To address this issue, importance and attainment ratings of 82 different life values as well as mood ratings were collected from 325 chronically ill and/or disabled persons and 504 non-disabled persons. Both groups largely agreed on what is important in life. The disabled persons, however, gave lower importance ratings on functions related to health and mobility. The attainment and mood ratings were in general slightly lower for the disabled persons. The attainment ratings for health and mobility were markedly lower. The concordance between rated importance and attainment across different life values was positive in both groups. This measure was also positively related to mood in both samples. It was suggested that disabled persons adjust to their life situation by de-emphasizing the importance of the physical functions affected by the disability and through habituation.

Affect↗
PubMed1994

Half-life values for DNA double-strand break rejoining in yeast can vary by more than an order of magnitude depending on the irradiation conditions.

Yeast cells in stationary phase were exposed under oxic or anoxic conditions to sparsely (30 MeV electrons) or densely (3.5 MeV alpha-particles) ionizing radiation. For all four experimental set-ups postirradiation treatment of cells was the same, i.e. cells were kept under oxic conditions in non-growth medium at 30 degrees C. Double-strand break (dsb) rejoining was measured during this treatment yielding the following results: (1) half-life values ranged from < 60 min (electrons, anoxia) to 3.8 h (low doses of electrons, oxia), 7 h (alpha-particles, anoxia), 10 h (high doses of electrons, oxia) and 13 h (alpha-particles, oxia). (2) In the case of exposure of oxic cells to electrons a biphasic rejoining kinetics is observed with a dose-dependent increase of the fraction of the slow component. These results suggest that half-life values of dsb rejoining in a given cell depend on physical, chemical and biological parameters. The rejoining of dsb slows down with increasing LET, being probably due to the increasing complexity of dsb. Oxygenation of cells at the time of irradiation affects half-life values, indicating that radiation chemistry plays an important role. The biphasic rejoining kinetics observed for dsb induced by electrons in oxic cells is interpreted in terms of a dose-dependent change of chromatin structure hindering the interaction between damaged chromatin and the rejoining enzymes rather than by two chemically distinct types of dsb with differing half-life values.

Alpha Particles↗
PubMed2005

Life values in patients with COPD: relations with pulmonary functioning and health related quality of life.

Theories of coping and response shift have suggested that emotional adaptation is related to value changes, e.g. a deemphasized importance of lost life values and an enlargement of the scope of values. Perceived attainment and importance of 82 life values were examined in 65 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and related to clinical and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL) measures. The life values covered 10 dimensions--harmony, positive relations, involvement, mobility, communication, knowledge, responsibility, comfort, religion and health. Forty-six of the patients were followed up after 1 year. The patients with COPD were compared with a healthy control group, a group of neurologically impaired and a non-disabled group representing the general population. Significant congruence was found between importance and attainment ratings in all groups (correlations from 0.44 to 0.53), suggesting that both impaired and healthy persons tend to perceive that they have what they find important in life. Congruence was significantly related to mood (correlations from 0.28 to 0.40), but not to functional status or clinical data. Compared to the healthy responders, the patients with COPD had significantly lower attainment ratings in health, mobility, involvement, but no differences were found for importance ratings. No evidence was found that they had replaced unattainable values with new available values, and no changes over time of perceived values were found. This suggests that patients with COPD do not seem to adapt by means of changing their value orientation.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

A nomogram to predict the best biological half-life values for candidates for oral prolonged-release formulations.

It is sometimes possible to maintain plasma concentrations between desired maximum and minimum limits by repetitively administering a drug in an oral prolonged-release formulation when this goal cannot be achieved with a rapid-release formulation. However, this approach does not work with all drugs. The biological half-life value of the drug can be one cause for failure of this approach. Although it is recognized that a half-life may be too long or too short, neither the criteria for determining these values nor the consequences of failing to meet them have been established. The best half-life values for prolonged-release candidates were found by simulating once-a-day and twice-a-day administration of formulations and examining the capacity of these formulations to maintain steady-state plasma concentrations between various selected limits. These observations were used to establish criteria to judge the acceptability of half-lives. Half-life values were considered too long if drugs were self-sustaining and simulations of their rapid-release formulations were also successful. Half-life values were considered too short if minor variability in prolonged-release rates resulted in plasma concentrations above and/or below the selected limits. The actual half-life values that were considered too long or too short depended on the dosing interval and the selected maximum and minimum plasma concentrations. A nomogram was constructed to assess the acceptability of the biological half-life of a candidate for once-a-day or twice-a-day prolonged-release formulations. The nomogram employs the user-selected limits for the desired plasma concentrations to predict whether the half-life of a candidate is (1) too long, (2) too short, or (3) acceptable (i.e., between 1 and 2).

Administration, Oral↗
PubMed1989

Relationships between the life values of U.S. college students and their cognitive/affective responses to the threat of nuclear war.

The present study was designed to examine relationships between the life values of 399 U.S. college students and their nuclear war-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The students completed four scales from the Life Values Inventory: (i.e. Conventionally Defined Success [CDS]; Religious Faith and Devotion [RFD]; Activist Pursuit of Social Causes [APSC]; Materialistic Orientation [MO]), the Satisfaction With Life Scale, four scales from the Nuclear War Inventory--Nuclear Distress; Salience; Weapons Opposition; Personal Efficacy--and a single behavioral measure of approach toward information concerning nuclear weapons. Consistent with theory regarding the influence of values and commitments on attitudes and behavior, APSC was found to be positively associated with all five nuclear war measures. Additionally, MO was negatively related to Personal Efficacy and Information Approach, and CDS was positively associated with Nuclear Distress. The only value dimension which covaried significantly with general life satisfaction was RFD. Results are discussed with respect to the recent rise in conservative and materialistically-oriented values among American college students.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Gender differences in older adults' preferences for life-sustaining medical treatments and end-of-life values.

In the present study, we examined gender differences in preferences for life sustaining treatments in response to various health state scenarios and the endorsement of end-of-life values in 99 older adults. Men preferred life-sustaining treatments more than women overall, for specific treatments (i.e., CPR, surgery, and artificial feeding), and in response to specific health scenarios (i.e., current health, Alzheimer's disease, coma with a slight chance of recovery). In terms of values, women indicated a greater desire for a dignified death than men.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Performance of valued life activities reflected asthma-specific quality of life more than general physical function.

OBJECTIVE: We examined the prevalence of disability in valued life activities (VLAs) among a group of adults with asthma and the impact of general physical function and performance of VLAs on asthma-specific quality of life (QOL). STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Interview data collected from two waves of a longitudinal cohort study were used to examine the prevalence of disability in VLAs, the cross-sectional association of general function and performance of VLAs with QOL, and the longitudinal association of changes in general function and changes in performance of VLAs with changes in QOL. General function was assessed with the SF-12; VLAs were assessed with a newly developed measure. RESULTS: A substantial portion of subjects reported disability in VLAs. VLA function was a stronger predictor of QOL than general physical function in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. CONCLUSION: Performance of VLAs is more closely tied to asthma-specific QOL than is general physical function.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1996

Fates worse than death: the role of valued life activities in health-state evaluations.

One hundred eight college students (Study 1) and 109 elderly adults (Study 2) rated 28 health impairments for the quality of life perceived to be possible in that state, the extent to which the state was perceived as a fate better or worse than death, and the extent to which the state was perceived to interfere with the ability to engage in the activities each individual valued most in life. States perceived most negatively were those perceived to interfere most with valued life activities. For any given health state, evaluations were more negative the more the state was perceived by individuals as likely to interfere with engagement in their valued life activities. Implications of these results for end-of-life medical decision making in general and the use of advance medical directives in particular are discussed.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2005

Prevalence and predictors of disability in valued life activities among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE: To identify the prevalence of disability in a wide range of life activities and identify factors associated with such disability using the Verbrugge and Jette disablement model as a framework. METHODS: Data were from a panel study of 548 individuals with rheumatoid arthritis, interviewed annually by telephone. Valued life activity (VLA) disability was assessed using a 26-item scale rating difficulty in carrying out each activity. Three types of summary measure were calculated: activities unable to perform, activities affected, and mean difficulty. Subscale scores were also calculated, corresponding to obligatory, committed, and discretionary activities, as defined in the disablement model. Disease status measures were examined as predictors of VLA disability using multiple regression analyses. RESULTS: Half the subjects were unable to do at least one VLA. Approximately 2%, 31.3%, and 40.2% were unable to do at least one obligatory, committed, and discretionary activity, respectively. Almost all (95%) reported at least one VLA affected by rheumatoid arthritis; 68.4%, 91.4%, and 92.5% reported at least one obligatory, committed, and discretionary activity, respectively, affected. Disease status measures were robust predictors of VLA disability, accounting for 22-47% of the variation in VLA disability (with one exception). Adding the health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) to these models increased (p<0.0001) all model R2 values. HAQ score mediated the effects of many disease measures, consistent with the disablement model. CONCLUSION: VLA disability was common, with more disability noted in committed and discretionary than obligatory activities. Because VLA disability has been linked to psychological wellbeing in previous studies, identification of factors that may protect against such disability is important.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1997

Health motives and life values. A study of young persons' reasons for health.

The aim of this study was to investigate the health motives of young people, i.e. the things that give health meaning. The investigation was carried out as two studies among Finland-Swedish young people aged 13-19. A questionnaire with open questions framed with a multidimensional perspective on health was filled in by 152 pupils at secondary school, 121 pupils at upper secondary school and 115 pupils at vocational school in study I. A theme interview with 15 young persons was the data assembling method used in study II. The data was analysed using the hermeneutical method. The results revealed that a young person's experience of health and idea of what health is cannot be understood in a deeper sense without understanding the young person's health motives. The health motives can be described at different levels as external, internal and fundamental. The different motives for health form health motive complexes, which are based on an aspiration to avoid something perceived as evil, such as illness and suffering. On the other hand, the motives are based on an aspiration to achieve what is good, such as love and life. The motives mentioned as meaningful for health have to do with the things that are valued in life. Consciousness of life values that last and can give meaning provides an answer to the 'why' of health. Humanistic values, existentialistic values, materialistic values or traditionalistic values give the clue to why health is meaningful for a young person. The results also indicated that there are difference in young persons' health motives in different school contexts.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Life values, psychotherapy, and East-West integration.

This paper intends to examine life-styles and values of East and West and to note apparent differences and underlying commonalities relevant to psychotherapy and clinical issues. Topics discussed include a public versus private orientation, a pragmatic versus psychodynamic approach, and dependence versus independence.

China↗
PubMed2006

Health professionals' assessment of health-related quality of life values for oral clefting by age using a visual analogue scale method.

OBJECTIVE: To elicit health-related quality of life (HRQL) values associated with oral clefting by age using a visual analogue scale, and to explore the appropriateness of using health professionals as evaluators. METHODS: A representative group of health professionals working on craniofacial and/or cleft palate teams in the United States was sampled. Values (between 0 and 1) representing the HRQL associated with isolated and nonisolated oral clefting for infants, children, adolescents, and adults were obtained. The relationships between selected evaluator characteristics and values were also assessed. RESULTS: Of 330 professionals surveyed, 133 (40%) completed and returned reliable evaluations. Overall, HRQL values were clustered toward the right tail of the scale, indicating modest decreases in HRQL. Most evaluators reported feeling confident in completing the evaluations. HRQL values seemed to vary by team type (cleft palate only versus cleft palate/craniofacial care) and geographic location, but no major differences were found overall for any selected evaluator characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides HRQL values for oral clefting based on preferences of health professionals that may be useful in evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of prevention and treatment strategies, including those carried out in clinical trial studies. The clustered pattern of HRQL values suggests either a consensus among evaluators of a limited burden of oral clefting or an overall lack of understanding of the evaluation task.

Adolescent↗