Psychological state, quality of life, and coping style in patients with digestive cancer

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationships between psychological characteristics such as anxiety and depression, quality of life (QOL) and coping style among patients with digestive cancer. The subjects were 85 in-patients who were scheduled to undergo initial surgery for gastrointestinal cancer. The following psychological tests were administered: Japanese versions of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Zung's Self-Rating Depression Scale, the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) QLQ C30 and the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations. The first 3 tests were performed on three occasions: before surgery, before discharge and 6 months after discharge. The results showed that there was no change over the 3 test administration days for the average scores of anxiety and that the scores of depression increased from before surgery to before discharge and did not return to presurgery levels at 6 months after discharge. Changes in each subscale score of the EORTC QLQ C30 across the 3 days displayed two typical trends. Relationships between the abovementioned trends and individual coping styles showed that the higher the score of "emotion-oriented coping style," the greater the deterioration in QOL subscales. It was suggested that focusing on a patient's coping style, particularly emotion-oriented coping style, is important and that patients likely to adopt a more emotion-oriented coping style should receive special consideration.