Young Women With Pancreatic Cancer: A High‐Risk Group for Demoralization

作者：Abrahm Levi, Aryan Nasr, Y Y Cui, Anser A. Abbas, Tara Arouchian, Andrew L. Coveler, Tracey L. Pierce, B. Anderson, Eric Collisson, John Davelaar, Simon K. Lo, Srinivas Gaddam, Jun Gong, Arsen Osipov, Andrew Eugene Hendifar · 发表于：Psycho-Oncology · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1002/pon.70601 · 研究领域：Cancer survivorship and care、Pancreatic and Hepatic Oncology Research、Economic and Financial Impacts of Cancer

BACKGROUND: Demoralization is a maladaptive coping response to stressful situations, characterized by thoughts of hopelessness, helplessness, and loss of meaning and purpose. Demoralization is clinically measurable using the Demoralization Scale 2 (DS-II). Pancreatic cancer (PC) patients, who carry a notoriously poor prognosis, are hypothesized to be at higher risk of demoralization. AIMS: This study uses the DS-II to gauge the impact of demoralization in PC patients compared to a heterogenous cancer population and establish its relation to depression. METHODS: Patients completed the DS-II, PHQ-9, and a demographic survey. The mean DS-II score of PC patients was compared with that of a previously published heterogenous cancer cohort reported by Ignatius et al. using a one-sample t-test. The univariable association between DS-II scores and PHQ-9 scores was examined using linear regression models. RESULTS: Of the 206 patients enrolled in the study, 47% were women and the mean age was 67 ± 10 years. The mean DS-II total score was 4.9 ± 5.2 points, significantly lower than the mean of 10.8 ± 8.0 previously reported by Ignatius and De La Garza II in a psychiatric oncology cohort (p < 0.001). There was no significant difference in demoralization scores across disease stages (p = 0.8). DS-II scores in univariable models were associated with depression (β = 0.79, p < 0.001), age (β = -0.09, p = 0.008), and women (p = 0.002). CONCLUSION: Demoralization in this cohort of patients with ...