Health-Promoting Lifestyle in Breast Cancer Survivors: In Relation to Depression and Social Support

Back ground: Changing to a health-promoting lifestyle is crucial to cancer survivors, both for promoting their health status and for refusing of the diseases and heightening the survival. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the association among depression, social supportand health-promoting behaviors in breast cancer survivors. Method: A cross sectional design was performed. The data were collected by questionnaires from a convenience sample of 158 breast cancer survivors in Urmia in 2014. The data were analyzed implementing descriptive statistics, t-tests, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation coefficients. Results: The mean age of the samples was 45.15 (SD=6.25), ranging from 32 to 66. The mean score for social support and depression was 68.59 (SD=12.32) and 16.18 (SD=9.66) respectively. The mean scorefor health-promoting lifestyle was 145.23 (SD=32.23). Among the six domains of a health promoting lifestyle, spiritual growth had the highest score (27.93,SD=2.68), while physical activity showed the lowest (21.01,SD=2.11). Significant positive relationships were found among socialsupport(r=0.6023,p<0.0001), depression (r=-0.5113p<0.0001), and health-promoting lifestyle. Conclusion: The findings of this study will accelerate the accessing to the healthy lifestyle in breast cancer survivors who are willing to pursue health promotion h behavior.