Daily stress and received social support in hematopoietic cell transplant patient-caregiver dyads.

Background And Objective: Reception of social support may foster adjustment in dyads facing cancer treatment. Still, understanding of the effects of received support in everyday life of patient-caregiver dyads remains limited. This study investigated whether the positive effect of daily received social support depends on daily stress levels and whether the effect differs by perspective (recipient vs. provider) in dyads undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT).

Design And Methods: The sample comprised 200 patient-caregiver dyads after HCT. The participants completed measures of daily stress levels, received and provided social support as well as affect for 28 consecutive days.

Results: Regardless of daily stress levels, the caregivers reported better affect on days when they noticed more received support (recipient perspective), whereas the patients reported worse affect on days when they noticed more received support (recipient perspective) and/or when their caregivers reported higher provided support (provider perspective).

Conclusion: The effects of daily received support were not related to the levels of daily stress in patient-caregiver dyads after HCT. Also, the effects varied by role (benefits in the caregivers vs. harm in the patients) and perspective (similarities in the patients vs. differences in the caregivers).