Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Marie-Christine Goodworth

Abstract

Palliative care services (PCS) seek to increase quality of life and manage symptoms of persons with chronic illnesses. Depression and anxiety are common concerns for persons receiving PCS. One intervention that has demonstrated some effectiveness and requires further research is a brief concreteness training (CT) intervention based on cognitive-behavioral techniques. This study piloted the implementation of a brief CT intervention via an iOS application for persons qualifying for PCS. Forty-one people completed all of the pretest measures, and 9 participants completed the entire study. Variables measured were anxiety, depression, spiritual well-being, health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and patient activation. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control group or a treatment group that completed the CT intervention. Results found that the CT intervention iOS application had no significant difference on anxiety, depression, spiritual well-being, HRQOL, or PAM. Homogeneity of effects sizes test were run due to the small sample size and also found no significant differences from pretest to posttest between the groups. However, effects sizes of the final sample demonstrate that there may have been differences between the CT and control group at pretest, which may have influenced the results. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

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