INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE RESPONSES TO CANCER AND RELIGIOUS COPING STYLES OF NEWLY DIAGNOSED BREAST CANCER PATIENTS

This research is a descriptive study conducted to assess the relationship between the responses to cancer by patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer and their religious coping.The study included 150 newly diagnosed breast cancer patients who received chemotherapy from November 2016/ April 2017 in the outpatient chemotherapy unit of a private university hospital. As a data collection tool, the questionnaire containing the descriptive and demographic characteristics of the patients, the scale of response style to cancer, and the religious coping style scale were used in the study. The data of the research were analyzed in terms of normal distribution by using the Shapiro-Wilks normality test. Since the data did not show normal distribution, the Mann-Whitney U test was used in two independent group comparisons, and the Kruskal-Wallis test was used in comparisons between more than two independent groups.Spearman correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between scales. The predictive level of the Religious Coping Subscales to the Cancer Response subscale scores was evaluated by linear regression analysis. In the study, spiritual struggling subscale score within the scale of response to cancer was 51.81+4.95, the helplessness-despair subscale score was 9.85+2.39, anxious anticipate subscale score was 23.54+2.35, the fatalist subscale score was 19.98+1.59, and deny subscale score was 1.73+0.67.In other words, it was determined that the spiritual struggling soul was highly used by patients in response to cancer. In the study, the positive religious coping scale scores were 23.16+3.27, and negative religious coping scores were 7.72+1.77, which mean that most of the patients had positive religious coping scores. A positive correlation was found between the positive religious coping score and the spiritual struggling score (p<0.05; r=0.440). As the positive religious coping increases, the patients' struggle with disease is increasing. It has been observed that there is a relationship between cancer responses and religious coping of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients.