The Status And Influencing Factors Of Stigma In Young Patients With Breast Cancer

Objective:1. To describe the current status of stigma in young patients with breast cancer.2. To investigate the related factors affecting stigma in young patients with breast cancer.Methods:This study is a cross-sectional investigation. A convenient sample of young women with breast cancer in a cancer hospital in Shandong Province were studied. Perceived Devaluation-Discrimination(PDD) was administered to assess the stigma of patients. A self-made questionnaire, Self-Esteem Scale(SES) and Social Support Scale(SSS) were used to assess the relative factors of stigma. All data were collected by these self-administered questionnaire and analyzed with the SPSS 13.0 software.Results:1. The mean of "detraction-discrimination sensation" among people with breast cancer is (3.83±0.31), which is higher than the median at 2.50(P<0.01).The score of misunderstanding is (2.87±0.39), lower than the median of the instrument, which means that most patients feel been misunderstood.2. The scores of five dimensions of coping are challenging (3.09±0.43)、 education (2.93±0.36) confidentiality (2.81±0.43),separation (2.73±0.42),and withdrawal (2.71±0.36), which are all higher than the median of the instrument. It indicates that most of the breast cancer patients accept the five coping strategies, among which the first two adopted strategies are education and challenging, when patients face discrimination or detraction.3. The score of self-esteem and among young breast cancer patients was (24.75±2.82, P<0.01), which is significantly lower than that in the national level. Results from multiple factors analysis indicated that self-esteem was statistically significantly negatively related to disease related stigma(β=-0.185).The score of social support was(34.48±8.02,P<0.05,which is lower than the national level. Multiple factors analysis indicated that it is negtively related to stigma.(β=-0.007).4. Results from single factor analysis of the stigma among breast cancer patients demonstrated that age, state of marriage, education, career, income, surgery style, and postoperative time had statistically significant differences (P<0.05). But family history, payment style and residencehad no statistically different influences on stigma among breast cancer patients.5. Results of multiple Logistic regression analysis showed that age, education and monthly income were negatively related to disease related stigma (P:-0.130～0.730;P<0.01); while social status, postoperative time and state of marriage were positively related to disease related stigma (β:0.136～-0.298;P<0.05)Conclusions:Stigma is common among young breast cancer patients, which has negative effect on their life, which is negatively related to self-esteem and social support. Therefore, improvement of social support and self-esteem can reduce the degree of disease related stigma. Meanwhile, patients with greater age, higher education and more monthly income feel less stigma. However, the higher of the social status, the longer of the duration after surgery, and unhappy marriage increase the disease related stigma.