| Abstract [eng] |
While malignant illnesses became the second death cause by frequency in Lithuania, there are more and more people giving care to their close ones that suffer from malignant illness. These changed circumstances affect their professional careers, raise social, financial and, of course, psychological issues. Notwithstanding the hardships, it has been noted that some caregivers being psychologically resilient, are able to successfully adapt to the changed situation. The objective of this study is to disclose and describe the criteria of psychological resilience, that have been named as significant and those that assist in adapting when giving care to an oncological patient. For this purpose 26 main informal caregivers have been inquired, who have been giving care to a patient for not less than a year. They have been given a Caregiver Strain Index. Those participants that have achieved less than 7 scores (which indicates low strain) have been invited to take part in a phenomenological interview, which has been conducted under Giorgi method. 10 participants took part in this phase. After the general phenomenon has been described, it has been determined that in an inter-personal context the participants of the study had related their psychological resilience with the inter-relationship empathy with other people. It can be experienced together with other people that ended up in a similar situation or with other relatives, colleagues or completely unknown people. In the interpersonal context the participants relate their psychological resilience with the experience of the insight and the putting of meaning to the illness and their own caregiving. Sometimes this process takes place by consciously putting aside the troubling information. New understanding of the situation gives new hope, which is a very important psychological resilience aspect. Psychological resilience is also being related to a newly discovered exceptional relationship with the patient: this includes close communication, active participation in the healing process; however sometimes this is also a possibly dangerous intersection of personal borders when the patient is considered as a continuation of the caregiver‘s identity. On the other hand, psychological resilience is also being related with the need to experience autonomy from the caregiving situation. The personal initiative and openness to the new experience of the caregiver also becomes a subjectively important part of the caregiving process whereby new support sources are being sought. These particular psychological resilience criteria can be useful to professionals who are working both with caregivers of malignant and other slow-effect diseases, by disclosing the sources of their support and help. Furthermore, the results of the study demonstrate possibly dangerous sides of some psychological resilience criteria. This aspect is no less important when dealing with the caregiver. |
