The Effectiveness of Health Promoting Lifestyle Education on Distress Tolerance and Life Expectancy in Adolescences with Cancer

Cancer in adolescence can have a long-term impact on the physical, mental and social life of people in adulthood. As a result, the present research was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of health promoting lifestyle education on distress tolerance and life expectancy in adolescences with cancer.

The current research was semi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test design along with the control group. The research population was adolescences with cancer that referred to the Shahid Beheshti Hospital of Babol city in the winter season of 2022 year. The research sample was 30 people who were selected by the purposive sampling method, after checking the inclusion criteria and were replaced with the lottery in two equal groups, randomly. The experimental group was educated 8 sessions of 90 minute with the health promoting lifestyle method and during this period the control group was not trained. The research tools were included the demographic information form, Simmons and Gaher distress tolerance scale (2005) and Snyder et al life expectancy scale (1991). Data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance in SPSS-19 software at a significance level of 0.05.

The findings showed that 8 sessions of health promoting lifestyle education increased distress tolerance and life expectancy in adolescences with cancer (P<0.001).

The results of this study indicated the effectiveness of health promoting lifestyle education on increasing distress tolerance and life expectancy in adolescences with cancer. As a result, counselors and psychologists can use the mentioned method to improve the psychological characteristics of different groups, especially adolescences with cancer.