Posttraumatic growth and demoralization after cancer: The effects of patients' meaning-making.

OBJECTIVE: It is common for patients to experience positive and negative psychological changes (e.g., posttraumatic growth or demoralization) after being diagnosed with cancer. Although demoralization and posttraumatic growth are both related to meaning-making, little attention has been paid to the associations among these concepts. The current study investigated the relationship between demoralization, posttraumatic growth, and meaning-making (focusing on sense-making and benefit-finding during the experience of illness) in cancer patients. METHOD: Some 200 cancer patients (with lung cancer, lymphoma, or leukemia) at the MacKay Memorial Hospital in New Taipei completed the Demoralization Scale-Mandarin Version (DS-MV), the Chinese Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (CPTGI), and a self-designed questionnaire for assessing sense-making and benefit-finding. RESULTS: Demoralization was negatively correlated with posttraumatic growth, sense-making, benefit-finding, and time-since-diagnosis. Multiple regression analysis showed that meaning-making had different effects on demoralization and posttraumatic growth. The interactions of sense-making with either benefit-finding or time-since-diagnosis significantly predicted demoralization. Individuals with relatively higher sense-making and benefit-finding or shorter time-since-diagnosis experienced less demoralization. SIGNIFICANCE OF RESULTS: The suffering of cancer may turn on the psychological process of demoralization, posttraumatic growth, and meaning-making in patients. Cancer patients who evidenced higher posttraumatic growth experienced less demoralization. Trying to identify positive changes in the experience of cancer may be a powerful way to increase posttraumatic growth. As time goes by, patients experienced less demoralization. Facilitating sense-making can have similar effects. Cancer patients with less benefit-finding experience higher demoralization, but sense-making buffers this effect.

Analysis of rhubarb anthraquinones and bianthrones by microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography.

In this work a method of microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography (MEEKC) has been developed for the analysis of nine anthraquinones and bianthrones in rhubarb. This study employed di-n-butyl tartrate as oil substance to make up the microemulsion. The composition of the microemulsion was 0.5% (w/w) di-n-butyl tartrate, 0.6% (w/w) SDS, 1.2% (w/w) 1-butanol and 97.7% (w/w) 10 mM sodium borate buffer, pH of the buffer being 9.2. Acetonitrile was added to the emulsion to improve the separation. The volume ratio between the emulsion solution and acetonitrile of an optimized separation was 70:30. With the optimized conditions all of the nine analytes were baseline-separated in peaks of good shapes within 20 min. After validation the method was used to analyze the components in a rhubarb sample. A solid-phase extraction procedure was employed. Five anthraquinones and two bianthrones had been detected in the sample and their amounts were determined. The method should be able to be used for the quantitative analysis of the main active components of rhubarb crude drugs.