The difference in cancer experience in creative people. An exploratory study

Creativity is described as allowing the individual to make compromises with their own environment or according to the context of their lives. Here, it may be understood as creating lives, ordering them. In case of illness, a creative person should adapt better. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate that a creative person lives differently with cancer. The sample consists of thirty-five men and women (61 + 11 years) with cancer and receiving chemotherapy. Evaluation tools are: Corsi Cubes, BFI-FR and TAS to determine creative cluster. In addition, participants passed the WHOQOL-26 and HADS-D to assess quality of life and level of depression. Two distinct groups of creativity were identified (e = 0.28, P = 0.003). These profiles are significantly different in terms of their level of depression and 2/3 of the quality of life constructs (P between 0.001 and 0.032). Descriptive analyzes show that creative people have fewer depressive symptoms and better quality of life than the others. The creative patient seems to have a better experience of the disease, a phenomenon that may be useful for counseling in psycho-oncology. (C) 2020 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.