Association of Coping Strategies with Death Anxiety through Mediating Role of Disease Perception in Patients with Breast Cancer

Abstract

Background: Understanding the disease symptoms is among the important psychological and behavioral variables in cancer treatment, which is based on the acquisition of information from different sources and patient s beliefs and can affect the mental health and capability of the individual in compliance with the disease. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship of coping strategies with death anxiety through the mediation of disease perception in patients with breast cancer in Abadan city in 2020. \nMethods: The study was a descriptive correlation performed by path analysis. The statistical population included all patients with breast cancer in Abadan city and 200 of which were selected as the sample of the study using convenience sampling. The research instruments included the Death Anxiety Scale (DAS), the Ways of Coping Questionnaire (WCQ), and the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (Brief IPQ). The proposed model was evaluated using path analysis with AMOS software. \nResults: The results showed that there was a significant association between problem-focused strategy and disease perception (P= 0.002), problem-focused strategy and death anxiety (P= 0.001), emotion-focused strategy and disease perception (P= 0.001), disease perception and death anxiety (P= 0.001). There was no significant association between problem-focused strategy and death anxiety. The results of path analysis indicated that disease perception played a mediating role in the association between the emotion- and problem-focused strategies with death anxiety (P= 0.01). \nConclusion: According to the results of the study, the proposed model had a good fit and is an important step in identifying the factors affecting the death anxiety of patients with breast cancer.