Functional types of effective social support produce complementary benefits among cancer survivors

Hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) is an aggressive treatment for hematologic cancers. During and after transplant, patients must cope with physical and psychological challenges including relapse, acute and chronic side effects, difficult social reintegration and financial strain. Receiving effective social support has been shown to have positive effects on mental and physical health outcomes. However, to date no study has examined the potential pathways through which these benefits occur. We hypothesized that receiving different types of effective caregiver support would influence specific aspects of their transplant experience, as described in their written narratives. 182 HSCT survivors reported the effectiveness of emotional, informational, and task support from their main caregiver, then completed three writing exercises describing their experiences before, during and after transplant. Narratives were analyzed with LIWC, a linguistic word count program. Correlational analyses revealed that survivors who received more effective emotional support used fewer negative emotion words (r=-0.17, p=0.02), particularly fewer sadness words (r= -0.15, p=0.04). Survivors who received more effective informational support used fewer words indicating causation (r=-0.18, p=0.015), especially when describing their experience after transplant (r=-0.19, p=0.010). Causal words are thought to be part of the process through which participants create reappraisals of traumatic events. Survivors who received more effective task support used fewer money related words (r=-0.24, p=0.001), especially when describing their experience during (r=-0.18, p=0.02) and after (r=-0.24, p=0.001) transplant. Different functional types of caregiver support, when effective, appeared to relieve survivors' transplant-related emotional, practical, and existential concerns. Implications for interventions are discussed.