A Study of the Correlation of Anxiety State and Life Style Defense Mechanism among Women with Breast Cancer in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Yun - Hsuan Li, 李昀諠
• Other Authors: 蕭妃秀
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2007
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/16376302461278807570

碩士 === 臺北醫學大學 === 護理學研究所 === 95 === Background：Cancer patients’ personality styles have an impact on their uses of defense mechanism. The high prevalence and poor progression of cancer are related to the uses of negative defense mechanism. The focus of researches in Taiwan emphasizes the emotional distress of cancer patients. A lack of study examines defense mechanism among cancer patients. The Purposes of The study:（1）To understand the differences in uses of life style defense mechanism among patients with breast cancer, persons without breast cancer and community people（2）To examine the differences in anxiety state among these three groups（3）To explore the relationship between life style defense mechanism and anxiety state. Method：This study adopts case control design. The purposive sampling was used to recruit subjects from cancer centre of teaching hospital in Taipei. Patients’ problems diagnosed as breast cancer was allocated in the case group; patients’ problems diagnosed as not breast cancer in the control group 1; female persons in community never being to breast cancer in the control group 2. The total sample consists of 216 subjects; including 48 in breast cancer group, 74 in non-breast cancer group and 94 in community group. The instruments include personal information, Lifestyle Defense Mechanism (LDM) and Anxiety State Inventory (SAI). Results：The findings indicated that the distributions of LDM and its subscales including Rationality / Emotional Defensiveness; R/ED, R/ED- rationality defensiveness; R/ED-r, R/ED-emotional defensiveness; R/ED-e, Need for Harmony, NH- harmonious related; NH-hr, NH- self sacrifice; NH-ss, appeared to concentrate on the right side of mean scores of these scales. The results suggested that subjects in three groups were likely to use defensive mechanisms of rationality, suppression, interpersonal harmony and self-sacrifice simultaneously. The One-way ANOVA test confirmed that frequency of using self-sacrifice was greater in cancer group than in community group（t=2.05, p= .04）。With regard to the relationship between LDM and SAI, there is only one positive significant relationship found on the subscale NH-ss and SAI in community group（r=0.22, p= .03）. Conclusion：Due to impacts of personality and sociocultural factors, patients with breast cancer more frequently use defense mechanism of self-sacrifice which contributes to high emotional suppression. The extreme emotional suppressions may result in repression of emotions, as a result of not awareness of anxiety state. Development of Chinese-version LDM can be used as important instrument for the further study.