%0 Journal Article
%T Living With Medical Uncertainty: A Psychological Model of Fear, Hope, Decision Conflict, and Adaptive Meaning-Making
%A Ana Rodrigues
%A Tiago Martins
%A Bruno Lopes
%J International Journal of Social and Psychological Aspects of Healthcare
%@ 3108-4818
%D 2026
%V 6
%N 1
%R 10.51847/J4l3oef9Ce
%P 186-196
%X Medical uncertainty is often treated as a deficit of information that should be progressively reduced through diagnosis, prognostication, testing, or communication. Yet uncertainty is also a lived psychological condition in which incomplete knowledge acquires emotional, behavioral, relational, and existential significance. This article develops a non-empirical psychological model of living with medical uncertainty by distinguishing uncertainty itself from the responses it evokes. Fear arises when unresolved possibilities are appraised as threatening, consequential, and difficult to control. Hope preserves valued future possibilities without necessarily denying uncertainty. Decision conflict emerges when uncertain evidence must be translated into action despite incomplete prediction, competing values, or disagreement about what problem is being decided. Information seeking, avoidance, and reassurance are conceptualized as regulatory strategies rather than simple indicators of engagement. Meaning-making provides a further adaptive pathway by reorganizing illness experience into a sufficiently coherent narrative without requiring uncertainty to disappear. The proposed model therefore treats fear, hope, conflict, information behavior, and meaning as dynamically interacting states rather than sequential stages. Their configuration is expected to vary with illness trajectory, communication, social resources, literacy, cultural expectations, perceived control, power, and access to credible support. The model is intended as a bounded theoretical synthesis requiring longitudinal, comparative, and intervention-based validation.
%U https://smerpub.com/article/living-with-medical-uncertainty-a-psychological-model-of-fear-hope-decision-conflict-and-adaptiv-nngfhix8x3eey7h