Hopelessness and Fighting Spirit Relation with Illness Perception in Female Breast Cancer Patients

Objective: Breast cancer is related to numerous psychological challenges, so the way of coping with the illness and its consequences may influence the outcome of treatment. Also, while confronting the diagnosis individuals will use their own illness perception in order to evaluate the possibility of healing and that can affect different areas of their functioning. The aim was to examine the degree to which women with breast cancer perceived their illness as threatening, as well as to examine potential predictive power of illness perception on strategies of coping with illness (hopelessness and fighting spirit). Method: 102 patients (Mage = 58.64, SDage = 10.143), who were hospitalized at the Center for Oncology and Radiology, for treatment of previously diagnosed breast cancer (Mmonths = 19.07, SDmonths = 23.49), were included in the study. The instruments included sociodemographic questionnaire, medical records, Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire and the Mini-Mental Adjustment to Cancer scale. Results: Patients declared to use fighting spirit more than hopeless style of coping the illness. Model that included Illness perception, Metastasis and Treatment length predicted 16% of Fighting Spirit variance. Model that included Illness perception and Age predicted 39% of Hopelessness variance. Conclusion: Illness perception can predict the tendency to resort to hopelessness and there is a correlation between certain sociodemographic and clinical characteristics with hopelessness and fighting spirit coping styles.