Prediction of resilience based on cognitive regulation of emotion and guilty feeling in women with breast cancer

The purpose of this study was to determine the role of cognitive-emotion regulation and guilty feelings on disease resilience in women with breast cancer.

The research method was correlational descriptive and the statistical population was all patients with breast cancer referred to Firoozgar Hospital, and Easts special medical center affiliated to Foundation of Special Diseases, in Tehran city, that were 381 patients in 2016-2017. From this population, 120 patients were selected as the sample through convenience sampling. The instruments were Resilience Questionnaire (Conor-Davidson, 2003), Cognitive-Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski, 2001), and Guilty Feelings Scale (Kauger and Jones, 1992). Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression.

The results indicated that negative emotion regulation (β= -0.25, P= 0.03), and guilty feelings (β= -0.29, P= 0.02) had a significant negative correlation with resilience. However, positive emotion regulation had a significant positive correlation with resilience (β= 0.44, P= 0.001).

Regulation of two factors of emotional control and guilty feelings of patients with breast cancer affect their mental health positively and may be predictive of their resilience improvement. Therefore, psychological interventions along with medical treatments can be beneficial for cognitive-emotion regulation, reducing guilty feelings, and increasing resilience in breast cancer patients, and also other patients.