Psychological resilience, spirituality ease breast cancer survivors’ fears of recurrence amid COVID-19

Despite missing medical follow-ups due to the COVID-19 pandemic, breast cancer survivors with high psychological resilience and spiritual wellbeing (SWB) show lower fear of cancer recurrence (FCR), a new study has found.

The researchers enrolled 82 nonmetastatic breast cancer patients (mean age 43.2±4.9 years) who had undergone primary treatment and whose monitoring had been suspended due to COVID-19. The FCR inventory-short form (FCRI-SF), SWB scale, and brief resilience scale (BRS) were used to assess psychological status.

The mean scores on the FCRI-SF, SWB scale, and BRS scale were 17.77±5.38, 36.20±6.21, and 20.01±4.51, respectively. None of the scores correlated significantly with participant sociodemographic characteristics.

On the other hand, the researchers detected interactions among the three test outcomes. SWB and BRS scores, for example, were significantly and positively correlated with each other (r, 0.501; p<0.001), while FCRI-SF was inversely associated with both BRS (r, –0.316; p=0.004) and SWB (r, –0.329; p=0.003).

Hierarchical linear regression analysis, setting FCRI-SF as the dependent variable, showed that SWB significantly affected FCR. Subsequent mediation analysis confirmed the interactions among the test outcomes and additionally showed that SWB mediated the relationship between psychological resilience FCR.

“[A]pproaches that increase the psychological resilience and spirituality of patients diagnosed with breast cancer should be developed. Further studies are needed to identify interventions that can improve coping strategies in at-risk individuals,” the researchers said.