The Comparison of Spiritual Experience and Resilience Between Women with Breast Cancer and Healthy Women

Aim and This study aimed to evaluate the spiritual experience and resilience of women with breast cancer undergoing radiation therapy and their healthy counterparts.
Methods and Materials: The present study was a retrospective comparative study. The study population included all women with breast cancer undergoing radiation therapy and their healthy counterparts referring to Imam Khomeini Hospital from May to September 2013. The study subjects were selected through convenience sampling. Thus, 50 women with breast cancer and history of surgery and mastectomy who had completed chemotherapy treatments and were undergoing radiotherapy were compared with 50 healthy women who were matched in terms of age, education, and marital status with the experimental group. Data were collected using the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance and t-test in SPSS software .
Findings: The results showed a statistically significant difference between the spiritual experiences of women with breast cancer and healthy women (P It can be concluded that spiritual experiences and resilience impact patients with breast cancer and undergoing radiation therapy. Therefore, it seems that finding ways to increase resilience and spiritual experience is necessary to improve and control their disease. Hence, it is recommended that future research, inspired by the results of this research, seek to enhance the resilience of women with cancer, and study its effects on mental health and quality of life (QOL) of these patients.