![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Learning Objective 1: Examine the relationships among coping, anxiety, and resilience
Learning Objective 2: Identify predictors of anxiety and resilience in adolescents undergoing cancer treatment.
This paper is a report of a study of examining the relationships among coping, anxiety, and resilience and to identify predictors of anxiety and resilience in adolescents undergoing cancer treatment.
Methods:
131 participants (55.7% male) between 11 and 19 years old (mean age = 14.7 years), diagnosed with cancer, without mental disease and receiving chemotherapy. Participants were assessed with the pediatric cancer coping scale (PCCS), revised children’s manifest anxiety scale, second edition (RCMAS-2), and the Haase adolescent resilience in illness scale (HARS).
Results:
Only 3.8% of participants reported being anxiety-free. Over 20% of participants scored high on the worry subscale of the RMAS-2. The most commonly used coping strategy was cognitive coping, followed by problem-oriented coping and finally by defensive coping. There was a significant correlation between defensive coping and level of worry (r = 0.53, p < 0.01). Resilience was positively correlated with cognitive coping (r = 0.71, p < 0.01) and problem-oriented coping (r = 0.58, p < 0.01). A step-wise multiple regression analysis found that cognitive coping and defensive coping were significant predictors of anxiety and resilience, accounting for 40.9% and 46.5% of total variance, respectively.
Conclusion:
There is a significant positive correlation between resilience and cognitive and problem-oriented coping style. Cognitive coping and defensive coping are predictors for the level of anxiety and resilience in adolescents undergoing cancer treatment.