The relationship between dyadic coping and post-traumatic growth in breast cancer patients and spouses: based on potential profile analysis.

Abstract

Background: The disease impact of breast cancer is to view the couple as a whole, breast cancer is a disease shared by the couple. Cancer coping has evolved from an individual perspective to a dyadic coping perspective for couples. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the dyadic coping categories of couples with breast cancer and to analyze the relationship between dyadic coping categories and post-traumatic growth (PTG) in couples with breast cancer.

Method: In this study, breast cancer patients and their spouses were selected as the study population from several tertiary hospitals in Jinzhou City using convenience sampling method in 2023. A general information questionnaire, Dyadic Coping Inventory (DCI), and Post-traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) were used to survey 254 couples with breast cancer. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was performed using Mplus (version 8.3). SPSS 26.0 was used for data entry, and data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance and multifactor logistic regression. Significance level α = 0.05.

Result: The study examines the influence of various factors such as educational attainment, age, income, residence, medical insurance, surgical procedure type, disease stage, and breast cancer recurrence on patients' coping strategies. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that education level, age at marriage, place of residence, form of health care coverage, stage of the disease, and whether or not the disease recurred were significant predictors of each indicator (P < 0.05). The LPA yielded four dyadic coping subgroups, with high relative entropy (0.942), respectively, each accounting for 7.4%, 17.1%, 24.3%, and 51.2% of the total. The study found that the high-level coping group scored significantly higher in all dimensions of binary coping with post-traumatic growth among different patient and spouse subgroups.

Conclusion: Couple dyadic coping in breast cancer patients was categorized into four groups. The low-level coping group is the one that needs focused observation and intervention. This is a better reference for caregivers to provide more targeted coping programs based on the different dyadic coping categories of couples of breast cancer patients.