Cancer, quality of life and depression symptoms: the process of creativity

Abstract

The diagnosis of cancer is associated with the occurrence of psychopathological symptoms which cause even more difficulties to patients. Scientific research demonstrates that creativity could help increase the general population's quality of life and regulate their negative emotions, but only a few studies are available on the link between creativity and the regulation of patients' respective experience. This study aims at measuring the impact of creativity on the patient's level of depression and quality of life. Thirty-five subjects undergoing chemotherapy treatment (age: 61 + 11) took part in this study. The experimental protocol is composed of creativity, depression and QoL tests. The results show that creativity is negatively correlated with depression level and positively with QoL (r=-.45; p=<.05 and r=.54; p=<.01 respectively). The linear regressions show that creativity is a variable which predicts a high QoL (F=13.83; p=.001). Also, 29,5% of the QoL variability is explained by creativity. A cluster analysis sorted out three different groups: Expressive non depressive person (ENDs); Inexpressive non depressive person (INDs) and Inexpressive depressive person (IDs). On this groups, an analysis of variance show that level of creativity and QoL are significatively different (F=7.07; p=.003; F=18.32; p<.001, respectively). These results suggest that creative person have a good QoL and people who have a good QoL are “protected†against depression. The creativity could have a noticeable influence on how patients experience their cancer. Further studies on this phenomenon will be necessary. Maybe a creative therapy has now a justification in oncology.