Evaluation of Socio-economic Status and its Impact on coping Behavior of Patients with Breast Cancer

Socio-economic status has been considered as an important factor that affects health related behaviors. According to recent studies, patients show different coping strategies against their disease based on their socio-economic status; so this study was designed to evaluate the effect of this factor on the coping behavior of patients with breast cancer.
This study was performed on 100 breast cancer patients referred to the Clinic of Iranian Center for Breast Cancer for further follow-ups. Demographic characteristics of patients were recorded and their coping behaviors were assessed by CWQ-R questionnaire. The socio-economic status was identified according to their educational and occupational status, family income and place of residency. The patients were divided into three categories (high, medium and low) with respect to their socio–economic status .Statistical correlations of coping behavior with socio-economic status were analyzed by SPSS 14 software using Anova and Kruskal-Wallis tests and by using univariate and multivariate regression analysis.
The mean age of patients was 44.1 ± 9.5 years (23-75). In terms of socio-economic status, 20%, 66% and 14% of the participants belonged to the high, medium and low categories respectively. Kruskal-Wallis test showed significant correlation between socio-economic status and coping behavior of patients in people with high social-economy ststus was the better and this relation was significant (p-value = 0.000). Between socio-economic status and coping ways behaviore strategies, only with avoid coping Strategy did not have significant relation (p-value = 0.138) and in the other strategies, was a significant relationship. Also regression analysis showed a significant relationship between the factor of having two or more children (as one of the demographic factors) univariate and multivariate both on patients coping behavior (p-value = 0.002).
The results indicated that patients with higher socio –economic status got higher coping score. In other words, their intellectual, emotional and behavioral efforts when face stressful situations were more. This can confirm the importance of psychological support and counseling in breast cancer patients with lower socio-economic status.