The impact of glioblastoma on patient’s affective, cognitive, social skills and caregiver’s quality of life

Abstract

Background: Patients with gliomas generally present cognitive, neuropsychiatric and functional deficits, which may consequently deteriorate the quality of life of their caregiver. However, few studies have investigated patients’ social cognition impairments and no study has to our knowledge focused on its impact on caregiver. Hence, this study aimed to better understand social cognition deficits in patients with glioma and to evaluate their impact on caregivers’ outcomes. Method: Three groups of participants had been recruited: 9 patients with gliomas, 11 caregivers and 6 control participants. Patients and control participants completed social cognition tasks (faux-pas detection, facial emotional expression recognition) and questionnaires (IRI, TEIQue), classic cognitive tasks as well as questionnaires about their affective distress. Caregivers completed questionnaires about their affective distress (HADS), quality of life (CarGOQoL), burden (CRA), as well as their perceptions of patients’ social, cognitive and affective disorders since the illness. Findings: Means comparisons revealed that compared to control participants, patients reported greater attribution of faux-pas in both faux-pas (p=.035) and no faux-pas scenarios (p=.035), reported lower trait emotional competencies (p=.043), and had better recognition of fearful facial expressions (p=.05). Among caregivers, their quality of life was positively correlated with their perceptions of patients’ empathic concern (p<.05) and negatively correlated with patients’ acquired social deficits (p<.05). Finally, caregivers’ psychological distress was positively correlated with their own perception of patients’ social deficits (p<.05). Discussion: These preliminary results highlight the importance of social cognition deficits in patients on their caregiver’s quality of life and mental health.