Assessment of Depression and Anxiety in Breast Cancer Patients: Prevalence and Associated Factors

Abstract

Introduction: Having breast cancer or receiving treatment has been seen as a traumatic experience for women due<br />to its impacts on their self-image and sexual relationship, and may lead to an psychological reactions such as denial,<br />anger, or intense fear toward their disease and treatment process. Also many of breast cancer patients have psychiatric<br />morbidities such as depression and anxiety. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalence and<br />associated factors of depression and anxiety in breast cancer patients, in order to identify independent predictors of mental<br />health disorders risk. Material and Methods: A cohort of 152 breast cancer patients who were attending an outpatient<br />oncology department was recruited. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire consisted by social, clinical<br />and demographic information and PHQ-2 and GAD-2 scales. Results: The mean age of the patients was 53.25 years<br />(SD=12.10), 69.7% of the patients underwent mastectomy and 30.3% ongectomy. Chemotherapy received 46.1% of<br />patients as adjuvant therapy, 15.8% radiotherapy and 38.2% received both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. A large<br />percentage found to be classified as depressed (38.2%) and anxious (32.2%) and factors that found to be associated<br />were age, marital status, educational level, stage of cancer from univariate analyses and place of residence, religion,<br />symptoms burden from multivariate analysis (for depression and anxiety). Conclusions: Breast cancer patients are<br />in high risk for developing psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. Being rural resident, non-Orthodox<br />Christian and experiencing extend symptom burden can be predicting factors associated with depression and anxiety<br />in breast cancer patients.