Direct Effects of Marital Empathy, Body Image, and Perceived Social Support on Quality of Life of Married Women with Breast Cancer and the Mediating Role of Perceived Marital Quality

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women worldwide, and its incidence has increased recently. Diagnosing cancer can create many challenges, especially for married women. The aim of the present study was thus to evaluate the effect of the relationships among marital empathy, body image, and perceived social support on quality of life (QoL) and the mediating role of perceived marital quality.

Married women with breast cancer (N = 160) were selected through purposive accessible sampling. Measures included body image scale, Batson empathy adjectives, multidimensional scale of perceived social support, perceived marital quality, and QoL. The research method was descriptive-correlational and using structural equation modeling.

The best model obtained showed that all predictors directly predicted QoL: marital empathy, body image, and perceived social support (P < 0.001). Predictors (except for perceived social support by family, friends, and others) also worked indirectly through perceived marital quality to predict QoL (P < 0.001).

Several variables predicted QoL for women with breast cancer, including body image and marital empathy. Most of such variables had both a direct effect and an indirect effect, working through perceived marital quality to affect QoL. Social support, however, had only a direct effect on QoL.