Impact of Diagnosis and Level of Mindfulness among Breast Cancer Patients in the Initial, Middle and Advanced Stages

The impact of a cancer diagnosis leads to a decrease in psychological, social and physical functioning thereby lowering one's overall quality of life. Mindfulness has been found to be related to coping and quality of life. The aim of the current study was to compare the Impact of a cancer diagnosis in the initial, middle and advanced stages of breast cancer and to assess the relationship between Impact of diagnosis and level of mindfulness in the patients. Present study is crosssectional observational comparative study. The study consisted of 30 breast cancer patients in the initial, middle and advanced stages (10 in each stage). The Impact of Events Scale and Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale Revised were used. One way analysis of variance was computed to see if the three groups significantly differed on the two measures. Pearson's Correlation was computed to find the association between Impact of diagnosis and Mindfulness. Results suggests ninety percent of the breast cancer patients reported negative psychological impact of the diagnosis. However, the three stages did not differ significantly with respect to Impact of diagnosis and level of mindfulness. Impact of diagnosis and level of Mindfulness were found to be negatively correlated. Findings can be concluded that Psychological factors have implications in the clinical management of breast cancer. Mindfulness based psychological interventions might be useful to aid the cancer experience, irrespective of the stage at diagnosis in breast cancer.