| Popis: |
Talking about dying can be distressing, but for young people with incurable diseases like cancer, talking about their needs and wishes at end-of-life is critical for achieving the best possible outcomes for patients and their families. There is a gap in the literature on factors influencing individual differences in how young people talk about death. To address this gap, this thesis examines the relevance of attachment theory in this context. Across five experiments using explicit and implicit measures, this research manipulated awareness of attachment figures prior to imagining end-of-life scenarios in order to examine the impacts of attachments on how end-of-life conversations are approached. Experiment 1 examined whether a mortality salience induction influenced how young people felt when talking about end-of-life. Experiment 2 assessed whether an attachment induction influenced how young people felt when talking about death. Experiment 3 replicated the design of Experiment 2, with the addition of measures to determine whether the attachment induction influenced what young participants chose to talk about. Experiment 4 examined whether young people who are avoidantly attached experienced a simulated end-of-life conversation differently to securely attached individuals, and whether there were differences between these groups on the topics mentioned in these end-of-life conversations. Experiment 5 used the same design as Experiments 2 and 3 but tested whether the attachment induction influenced how young people talk about the death of a close person. Across experiments, priming attachment awareness appeared to play a role in young people’s engagement with end-of-life conversations, with this relationship appearing to be moderated by individual attachment style. Further, attachment style seemed to influence the content of these simulated end-of-life conversations among young people. Individual differences in openness to discussing difficult topics such as death based on individual attachment style should be expected. These results suggest that consideration of attachment theory may have an important role to play in outcomes around end-of-life for young people and their families. |
