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Background/Objectives: Adolescent/young adult (AYA) cancer patients experience a variety of challenges, including higher rates of depressive symptoms (D) than healthy controls. Although various forms of social support (SS) seem to be a protective factor against D, AYAs also experience significant disruptions to SS. Snyder’s hope theory involves two interrelated components: agency (the belief in one’s ability to initiate or sustain action toward a desired goal) and pathways (the belief in one’s ability to produce workable routes to desired goals). Because hope, particularly the agency component, has been linked to both SS and D, it may mediate the relationship between the two. Methods: An online questionnaire was completed by AYA cancer patients (N = 205) in which they self-reported levels of perceived social support (PSS), hope, and D, among other scales and demographic variables. A parallel mediation model was conducted to determine if either or both agency and pathways explain the relationship between PSS and D. Results: Agency mediated the relationship between PSS and D in AYA women with cancer, but not men. Pathways did not mediate the relationship between PSS and D. Conclusions: Given the significantly higher prevalence of depression in women with cancer as compared to men, interventions to enhance agency are an important adjunct to methods to promote PSS in AYA women with cancer.

Loneliness is a significant challenge for millions worldwide, with chronic loneliness having harmful effects on physical health, mental well-being, and relationships. Cognitive distortions play an important role in perpetuating loneliness. Psychological interventions targeting such distortions have been effective at alleviating feelings of loneliness. However, less is known about which cognitive distortions are most prevalent among lonely individuals and how these distortions relate to loneliness and mental well-being. This exploratory study prescreened a Census-matched sample of 1000 U.S. adults for loneliness, then asked those in the top quartile (N = 237) to rate multiple patterns of cognitive distortion related to loneliness. Factor analyses identified six common and influential patterns of cognitive distortion (mindreading, future reward, catastrophizing, essentializing, deservedness, and externalizing). Essentializing was the most strongly endorsed factor, followed by mindreading and catastrophizing. Essentializing also evidenced the strongest correlation with loneliness. Additionally, the relationship between loneliness and participants’ stress was completely mediated by mindreading, catastrophizing, and essentializing. These findings highlight the importance of targeting specific cognitive distortions in loneliness interventions to effectively improve the mental well-being of lonely individuals.

Background: Not all emotional support messages consist purely of positive statements. Some emotional support messages received by cancer patients simultaneously communicate statements of caring but also negative statements, such as criticisms of patients’ actions. Objective: This study tests if a negative statement occurring within an emotional support message affects cancer patients’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the entire emotional support message as well as the perceived competence of the supporter communicating the emotional support message. Methods: Cancer patients watched video recordings of emotional support messages and subsequently provided ratings on message effectiveness and supporter competence. Some emotional support messages included negative statements, whereas other messages did not. Results: Messages that included a negative statement were rated lower on message effectiveness than messages without negative statements. Cancer patients rated supporters communicating messages with a negative statement as having significantly less competence than those who did not communicate a negative statement. Conclusion: A single negative statement occurring within an emotional support message may result in cancer patients viewing the emotional support as less effective and the supporter as less competent.

Successful prevention programs depend on a complex interplay among aspects of the intervention, the participant, the specific intervention setting, and the broader set of contexts with which a participant interacts. There is a need to theorize what happens as participants bring intervention ideas and behaviors into other life-contexts, and theory has not yet specified how social interactions about interventions may influence outcomes. To address this gap, we use an ecological perspective to develop the social interface model. This paper presents the key components of the model and its potential to aid the design and implementation of prevention interventions. The model is predicated on the idea that intervention message effectiveness depends not only on message aspects but also on the participants’ adoption and adaptation of the message vis-à-vis their social ecology. The model depicts processes by which intervention messages are received and enacted by participants through social processes occurring within and between relevant microsystems. Mesosystem interfaces (negligible interface, transference, co-dependence, and interdependence) can facilitate or detract from intervention effects. The social interface model advances prevention science by theorizing that practitioners can create better quality interventions by planning for what occurs after interventions are delivered.

Social support studies often focus on psychological outcomes for the support recipient and also presume potential support providers who will attempt to provide support in the first place. Therefore, the negative relational outcomes associated with not receiving emotional support when support is expected (nonsupport) are an understudied topic. Instances of nonsupport were compared to various emotional support messages on relational and psychological outcomes to understand how nonsupport compares against support messages of varying quality. Two hundred twenty-four women with breast cancer were asked to think of a person expected to provide emotional support if they disclosed their diagnosis on social media. Participants were given either a hypothetical support message from this person or told the person provided no message even though a message was expected. Dunnett’s t tests were used to analyze the nonsupport condition against low, moderate, and highly person-centered support messages. Providing no emotional support message (nonsupport) creates low levels of emotional improvement and high levels of negative relational ramifications similar to low person-centered messages. Moreover, only participants receiving the low person-centered message agreed on average they would rather have received no message at all instead. Because low person-centered messages and saying nothing whatsoever both create negative relational ramifications, support providers should strive to communicate emotional support messages with at least a moderate amount of person-centeredness. These findings further suggest those who are expected to provide emotional support cannot dodge this obligation since nonsupport is shown to have negative relational outcomes to low person-centered support messages.

PurposeThe current study identifies successes and limitations of sustaining Dale se Real (DsR) as a school-based educational intervention program related to drugs and violence for 7th and 8th grade students in Nicaragua, Central America. As evidence-based interventions are transported and imported across national borders, issues surrounding their adaptation and sustainability become important targets for investigation.Design/methodology/approachInterviews were conducted with nine key informants (e.g. school directors, implementers) from seven institutions, four of which sustained DsR and three of which did not. This study explores DsR's fit with the institutions' missions and routines, program adaptability, broader community support and sustainability planning.FindingsFindings demonstrate two emerging views of sustainability within the Nicaraguan schools: a deficit approach and an empowerment approach. These two approaches imply different motivational structures for institutions and also led to the practical finding that developers and trainers need to provide structured or formal ways of empowering schools to continue implementing a program after staff no longer routinely contact them.Originality/valueThis study contributes a particular case on what facilitates and impedes sustainability of school-based interventions that can inform future intervention research in Latin American countries.

This study investigates the potential for cancer patients’ supporters to experience cognitive biases after communicating emotional support messages. A success bias was predicted, such that those who planned their messages would rate those messages as more effective in comparison with those who did not plan their messages (H1a-H1c). An inflation bias was also predicted, such that supporters would rate their messages as more effective than cancer patients who also rated the messages (H2a-H2c). One hundred laboratory participants were randomly assigned to a planning or distraction task before recording an emotional support message for a friend who had hypothetically been diagnosed with cancer. Laboratory participants rated their own messages in terms of relational assurances, problem-solving utility, and emotional awareness. Subsequently, cancer patients viewed and rated the laboratory participants’ messages on the same characteristics. Participants who planned their messages rated their messages significantly higher than those who did not plan their messages in terms of relational assurance and problem-solving utility but not emotional awareness. Irrespective of planning or distraction condition, participants also rated their messages significantly higher on all three dependent variables than did cancer patients. Supporters should be aware of the propensity to overrate their supportive abilities and guard against the assumption that planning messages results in more effective support messages.

Emotional support messages can benefit recipients; however, verbal and nonverbal aspects of these messages can vary in effectiveness, and the process of communicating support can be stressful to some supporters. One potential behavior that may yield more effective support messages for recipients while reducing anxiety and stress for supporters is message planning. Thus, planning theory is used to test whether planning influences message effectiveness, nonverbal delivery of messages, self-reported anxiety, and physiological stress markers. Additionally, an individual’s trait-level reticence and prior support experiences are predicted to moderate the effects of message planning. One hundred laboratory participants were assigned to either a planning condition or writing distraction task and completed a series of self-report and physiological measures before, during, and after recording an emotional support message to a friend who had hypothetically been diagnosed with a serious form of cancer. Subsequently, a sample of one hundred cancer patients viewed the laboratory participants’ videos to provide message effectiveness ratings and four trained coders provided data on nonverbal behaviors from these recorded messages. Findings showed planning leads to more effective messages; however, it also leads to supporters engaging in success bias and inflation bias. Planning also increased vocal fluency, but not other nonverbal behaviors. Likewise, planning attenuated heart rate reactivity, but not other physiological markers. In general, experience and reticence did not moderate these main effects. Theoretical, practical, clinical, pedagogical, and methodological implications are discussed.