Correlations of resilience with coping styles and quality of life in patients with malignancies

Resilience is an individual's ability and psychological rebound capacity to adapt well after experiencing adversity, trauma, etc. Patients with strong resilience can face illnesses actively.

To determine the association of resilience with coping styles and quality of life in patients with malignancies.

This study included patients with malignant tumors who were hospitalized at Fuyang Hospital Affiliated to Anhui Medical University from March 2022 to March 2024. The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire, Social Support Rating Scale, and the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 were utilized to assess patients' resilience, coping styles, social support, and quality of life, respectively. Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to assess the correlations.

A total of 175 patients with malignant tumors demonstrated no marked difference in terms of age, education level, employment status, monthly household income, and disease staging (P < 0.05). Further, patients with malignancies demonstrated scores of 17.49 ± 1.20, 17.27 ± 1.46, and 11.19 ± 1.29 points in terms of coping styles in confrontation, avoidance, and resignation dimensions, respectively. Subjective support, objective support, and support utilization scores in terms of social support were 10.67 ± 1.80, 11.26 ± 2.08, and 9.24 ± 1.14 points, respectively. The total resilience score and tenacity, self-improvement, and optimism dimension scores were positively correlated with the confrontation coping style score, whereas the total resilience score and tenacity and self-improvement scores were negatively associated with avoidance and resignation coping style scores (P < 0.05). The total resilience score and the tenacity dimension score were positively associated with physical, role, cognitive, emotional, and social functions, as well as global health status (P < 0.05), and were inversely related to fatigue, insomnia, and economic difficulties (P < 0.05).

The resilience of patients with malignancies is positively associated with the confrontation dimension in the coping style, the total and various social support domain scores, and the overall quality of life. Clinical medical staff need to pay attention to the effect of medical coping styles and social support on the resilience level of patients with malignancies to further improve their quality of life.