Smith (1999) found a high level of acceptance of the loss of privacy during the hospital stay. This could lend more credence to the idea that the need for privacy is transitional. Perhaps the phases are: acceptance of reduced privacy > active regaining privacy > restoring the privacy balance. The need for a positive attitude for optimum healing was by far the most frequently mentioned subtheme. Participants discussed positive attitudes as a part of healing, that is, healing from surgery included mental or attitudinal improvement.
They also described it as necessary for and connected to physical healing. They were not certain about how this connection occurred but they believed it existed. Taylor (1993) also found that one of the most common beliefs of her subjects was that a positive attitude would prevent their breast cancer from returning. Levy, Lee, Bagley, and Lippman (1998) found a relationship between positive mood and living longer with breast cancer, and similar results with joy and living longer with breast cancer.
As has been mentioned previously living longer is not necessarily but this research may add to the strength of the importance of positive attitudes. Cognitive psychologists have demonstrated that attitude affects emotional responses (Beck, 1996). There is some evidence that a realistic set of attitudes, as opposed to negative attitudes, reduces physiological stress responses (Eiser, 1990). It is very possible that the reduction of stress responses such as lower blood pressure, reduced cortisol release, DNA repair, and increased natural killer cells, would enhance healing.
Most likely there are other physiological changes not yet discovered that relate to attitude and healing. Hardiness has been correlated with positive health outcomes having characteristics of commitment (enthusiastic involvement in life), control (a belief in one’s influence over life events), Each of these characteristics relate to positive attitudes. Optimism was though by some participants to be one type of positive attitude. Scheier and Carver (1995) developed a tool to measure “dispositional optimism.
” This is the general belief that good rather than bad things happen to them. As has been discussed in Chapter II, this optimism appears to have a relationship to positive health outcomes. It was shown that optimism led increased persistence, greater self-esteem and lower anxiety (Scheier & Carver, 1995). Tennen and Afflect (1997) expressed a concern that since positive outcomes do not always occur, optimists may be more vulnerable to disappointment and anxiety when things go wrong.
Perloff (1993) argued that optimists are more able to go about every day activities without being continually “on guard” with tension about what might happen. Cognitive psychologists believe there is a middle ground that is more related to mental health. The middle ground is a realistic appraisal that tends to yield a confidence in one’s ability to cope, and a recognition and acceptance that difficult situation often do arise (Eiser, 1990).