Poster Presentation Cancer Survivorship 2017

The relationship between resilience, distress and quality of life in cancer patients and survivors (#50)

Corinna Freytag 1 , Lisa Beatty 2 , Bogda Koczwara 3
  1. School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  2. School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
  3. Medical Oncology, Flinders University and Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Aims

Resilience is defined as a quality that, when high, enables people to (1) maintain higher levels of quality of life (QOL) throughout times of adversity, such as living with cancer, and (2) recover more quickly from the distress associated with the adverse event. On the foundation of the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions, this study investigated whether resilience moderates the relationship between QOL and distress.

Methods

Cancer patients (n=51) either currently receiving treatment (‘mid-treatment’), or post-treatment were recruited from a single institution. Patients completed a questionnaire battery comprising demographic and medical information; general distress (Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale); cancer-specific distress (Posttraumatic Stress Scale - Self Report); resilience (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale); and QOL (European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Core Questionnaire). Three multiple hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypothesised moderation.

Results

The relationship between QOL and distress did not differ between highly or less resilient patients (R2change = .017, Fchange(1, 44) = 1.020, p = .318). QOL was negatively associated with distress levels regardless of resilience levels. Results provided tentative support for the hypothesis that high resilience is associated with a faster recovery from distress (R2change=.063, Fchange(1,43)=3.444, p=.070), as highly resilient patients reported lower distress across both mid- and post-treatment. Less resilient participants were more distressed mid-treatment. However, the decreased levels of distress of less resilient participants post-treatment were not associated with the predicted increased levels of QOL (R2change=.041, Fchange(1,43)=2.477, p=.123).

Conclusions

Resilience was confirmed as being associated with higher quality of life and lower distress in this sample of patients. Future research should focus on interventions that may enhance resilience in cancer patients and survivors.