Type D personality and its relationship with perceived stress in women with breast cancer

Introduction and Aim: Personality characteristics and its effects on psychosomatic aspects of disorders such as cancer studied vastly during last decades. The present study aimed to seek the relationship between type D personality and perceived stress in women with breast cancer.Methods: This cross-sectional study conducted on 120 breast cancer patients admitted to a referral center at the north of Iran during 2017. The patients completed type-D scale (DS14) for type-D personality and perceived stress scale (PSS). The items of both scales scored manually and analyzed using IBM SPSS 21.Results: The mean and standard deviation of age were 49.5(10.1). Mean score for DS14 was 32.2(10.1) in a range from 6 to 52. Almost sixty percent of cases had DS14 score between 28 and 42. Mean score for PSS was 31.3(7.4) in a range from 11 to 47. Analysis showed a direct correlation between type D personality score and perceived stress score with Pearson r = 0.57 and P less than 0.001. Conclusion: The frequency of cancer patients with high score of type D personality was high in this study. The significant coefficient of determination of type D personality on perceived stress may play a significant role in the planning of psychological supportive care for breast cancer patients.