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Meaning, Spirituality, and Perceived Growth Across the Cancer Continuum: A Positive Psychology Perspective

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Psychological Aspects of Cancer

Abstract

Taking a positive psychology perspective on cancer survivorship, this chapter focuses on three interrelated topics: meaning, spirituality, and perceived growth. The meaning-making model (Park, Psychological Bulletin 136:257–301, 2010a; Park, Stress, coping, and meaning. In: Folkman S (ed.), Oxford handbook of stress, health, and coping (pp. 227–41), 2010b) serves as a framework for discussing current research in meaning, spirituality, and perceived growth within psycho-oncology. A brief overview of this meaning-making model is presented, and literature regarding meaning in the context of cancer is reviewed. A description of research on spirituality, an important aspect of meaning in the lives of many survivors, follows. Perceptions of stress-related growth, a product of meaning-making that has been receiving a great deal of attention within psycho-oncology research, is the third positive psychology topic discussed. Clinical implications and future research directions conclude the chapter. Importantly, because cancer survivorship spans a continuum from diagnosis through treatment and far beyond, and because survivors’ experiences of cancer change across this continuum, this chapter attends to the ways that issues of meaning, spirituality, and perceived growth may differ across the survivorship continuum and begins with an overview of this continuum.

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  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Crystal L. Park & David Hanna

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  1. Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Jennifer L. Steel

  2. Liver Transplantation Institute, Inonu University, Malatya, Turkey

    Brian I. Carr

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Park, C.L., Hanna, D. (2022). Meaning, Spirituality, and Perceived Growth Across the Cancer Continuum: A Positive Psychology Perspective. In: Steel, J.L., Carr, B.I. (eds) Psychological Aspects of Cancer. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85702-8_6

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