The effect of coping skills training on the quality of life among daughters of mothers with breast cancer

Introduction & Aim: Cancer affects the quality of life (QoL) of a person, family and other family-related systems. Given the changing the QoL in adolescents of parents with cancer, the issue of coping skills training and adaptation to parental disease needs to be addressed. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of coping skills training on the QoL among daughters of mothers with breast cancer. Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted with a control group including all 15-to-18-year-old teenage girls of mothers with breast cancer referring to Imam Khomeini Hospital and Rasoul-e Akram Therapeutic Research Center from January 2016 to July 2017. A continuous sampling method was used, in which 35 adolescents in the intervention group from Imam Khomeini Hospital and 35 in the control group from Rasoul-e Akram Therapeutic Research Center were selected. The control group received only pamphlets and posters in the department, but the intervention group apart from the pamphlets and posters in the section, used coping skills training by workshop and group discussion (groups of 5 to 8 participants) with the presence of a child s psychiatrist. QoL Inventory Tm 4.0 (generic core scales) was used in this study. The data from two groups of intervention and control was collected in two stages of pre-test and post-test (four weeks later) and analyzed by SPSS software version 21 using independent t-test and paired t-test for comparison of the mean scores of the two groups. Results: The results showed that there was no significant difference between the QoL and any of its dimensions before the intervention in the two groups, but after the intervention in the experimental group, in the dimensions of physical functioning (P <0.001), emotional functioning (P <0.001), and school functioning (P <0.001), this difference was significant and improved. The social functioning did not show a significant change. Conclusion: Coping skills training can lead to the improvement of the QoLof teenage girls of mothers with breast cancer. Therefore, it is suggested that educational intervention should be done for girls to increase coping skills to improve their quality of life.