Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

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MDPI, Current Oncology, 2(31), p. 672-684, 2024

DOI: 10.3390/curroncol31020049

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Positive Psychological Well-Being in Early Palliative Care: A Narrative Review of the Roles of Hope, Gratitude, and Death Acceptance

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

In the advanced cancer setting, low psychological functioning is a common symptom and its deleterious impact on health outcomes is well established. Yet, the beneficial role of positive psychological well-being (PPWB) on several clinical conditions has been demonstrated. Early palliative care (EPC) is a recent value-based model consisting of the early integration of palliative care into standard care for solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. While the late palliative care primary offers short-term interventions, predominantly pharmacological in nature and limited to physical symptom reduction, EPC has the potential to act over a longer term, enabling specific interventions aimed at promoting PPWB. This narrative review examines nine English studies retrieved from MEDLINE/PubMed, published up to October 2023, focusing on EPC and three dimensions of PPWB: hope, gratitude, and death acceptance. These dimensions consistently emerge in our clinical experience within the EPC setting for advanced cancer patients and appear to contribute to its clinical efficacy. The choice of a narrative review reflects the novelty of the topic, the limited existing research, and the need to incorporate a variety of methodological approaches for a comprehensive exploration.