Images of god in relation to coping strategies of palliative cancer patients.
Publication year
2010Source
Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 40, 4, (2010), pp. 495-501ISSN
Annotation
01 oktober 2010
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
Display more detailsDisplay less details
Organization
Medical Oncology
Anesthesiology
Medical Psychology
Journal title
Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
Volume
vol. 40
Issue
iss. 4
Page start
p. 495
Page end
p. 501
Subject
NCEBP 7: Effective primary care and public health; NCEBP 8: Psychological determinants of chronic illness; ONCOL 2: Age-related aspects of cancer; ONCOL 4: Quality of CareAbstract
CONTEXT: Religious coping is important for end-of-life treatment preferences, advance care planning, adjustment to stress, and quality of life. The currently available religious coping instruments draw on a religious and spiritual background that presupposes a very specific image of God, namely God as someone who personally interacts with people. However, according to empirical research, people may have various images of God that may or may not exist simultaneously. It is unknown whether one's belief in a specific image of God is related to the way one copes with a life-threatening disease. OBJECTIVES: To examine the relation between adherence to a personal, a nonpersonal, and/or an unknowable image of God and coping strategies in a group of Dutch palliative cancer patients who were no longer receiving antitumor treatments. METHODS: In total, 68 palliative care patients completed and returned the questionnaires on Images of God and the COPE-Easy. RESULTS: In the regression analysis, a nonpersonal image of God was a significant positive predictor for the coping strategies seeking advice and information (beta=0.339, P<0.01), seeking moral support (beta=0.262, P<0.05), and denial (beta=0.26, P<0.05), and a negative predictor for the coping strategy humor (beta=-0.483, P<0.01). A personal image of God was a significant positive predictor for the coping strategy turning to religion (beta=0.608, P<0.01). Age was the most important sociodemographic predictor for coping and had negative predictive value for seeking advice and information (beta=-0.268, P<0.05) and seeking moral support (beta=-0.247, P<0.05). CONCLUSION: A nonpersonal image of God is a more relevant predictor for different coping strategies in Dutch palliative cancer patients than a personal or an unknowable image of God.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238430]
- Electronic publications [122512]
- Faculty of Medical Sciences [90359]
- Open Access publications [97507]
Upload full text
Use your RU credentials (u/z-number and password) to log in with SURFconext to upload a file for processing by the repository team.