Social support and meaning of life in women with breast cancer

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Social support is known as an affection-oriented coping mechanism when a person is involved with cancer. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the relationship between family social support and the meaning of life in women with breast cancer.METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, 84 women with a mean age of 60 (SD = 5.7) years with breast cancer who were admitted to a teaching hospital participated. Data were collected using social support and meaning of life questionnaires. After collecting the completed questionnaires and entering the data into the computer, the analysis was performed using SPSS software and using t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation test at a significant level of 0.01.RESULTS: The mean score of their social support was 39.35 ± 9.51, respectively and the meaning of life was 29.5 ± 7.49. ANOVA results indicated that the social support score and meaning of life had no significant relationship with any of the demographic variables. Also, the findings suggest that there is a statistically significant correlation between social support and the meaning of life (r = 0.773, P < 0.001).CONCLUSION: It is proposed to increase the level of social support from the family to help improve the meaning of life in cancer patients.