Evaluation of Anxiety Symptoms based on Ambiguity Tolerance and Post Traumatic Growth among Breast Cancer Patients

Post-traumatic growth and ambiguity tolerance are known as the most important psychological factors in cancer patients. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of predicting anxiety symptoms based on ambiguity tolerance and post-traumatic growth in women with breast cancer.

The present study was descriptive of the correlational type. The population of the present study was all women with breast cancer in two private centers in Tehran in the second half of 2017, of which 150 people were selected by purposful sampling to test the hypotheses. The participants answered Beck's anxiety questionnaires (1990), Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) inventory (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996) and Ambiguity to tolerance (AT) Inventory (macline 2009, second version) and The obtained data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression.

The results showed that ambiguity tolerance explained 26.4% of the variance of anxiety symptoms in women with breast cancer. In the second stage, the inclusion of post-traumatic growth components into the equation explained 39.6% of the variance of anxiety symptoms. Also, among the components of post-traumatic growth, two components of life value and relationship with others negatively and significantly predicted anxiety symptoms in breast cancer patients.

Based on the results of the present study, it can be said that post-traumatic growth and ambiguity tolerance have a good predictive role in the anxiety symptoms of breast cancer patients.