The interplay between emotion regulation, emotional well-being, and cognitive functioning in brain tumor patients and their caregivers: An exploratory study

Objective: Brain tumor patients may suffer from a range of health-impairing problems reducing their quality of life. To identify potential targets for interventions, we examined the influence of different emotion regulation strategies on affective and cognitive functioning as indices of quality of life in patients and their caregivers in the early phase of treatment.

Methods: To this end, we conducted an exploratory longitudinal study on a small cohort, measuring emotion regulation, emotional well-being, and cognitive functioning on the day before each patient's tumor resection (28 patients and 11 caregivers) and several months after neurosurgery (22 patients and 10 caregivers).

Results: Results showed that emotion regulation strategies are relatively stable from preoperative to postoperative assessment. Nevertheless, several associations between emotion regulation strategies and quality of life indices were evident after tumor resection. In particular, our results were largely in line with previous research findings in healthy and other patient populations, corroborating the adaptive character of cognitive reappraisal, whereas suppression and expression of emotions were related to reduced cognitive and affective functioning, respectively.

Conclusions: Based on these results, we suggest that further intervention or qualitative studies explore whether therapeutic interventions directed toward mastery of cognitive reappraisal techniques and appropriate expression of emotions could lead to improved long-term adjustment among brain tumor patients and their caregivers.