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Posttraumatic Growth Among Older Adults With Late-Life Cancer Diagnoses, Aasha I. Hoogland

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

Gerontological scholarship has often focused on the ways older adults deteriorate or decline with time, but it is plausible that positive change continues into and throughout old age. Late-life psychosocial growth may even be facilitated by a life-altering event such as a cancer diagnosis, a phenomenon broadly termed posttraumatic growth (PTG). PTG has been examined in a variety of general population samples, but there is a noticeable lack of research on PTG that focuses on older adults—a population for whom cancer diagnoses are particularly prevalent. Using a mixed methods design, this dissertation was designed to advance our understanding of PTG …