Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and associated factors in newly diagnosed breast cancer survivors: A cross-sectional study.

Purpose: The research aimed to investigate the prevalence of PTSD in newly diagnosed Chinese women with breast cancer and to distinguish a munber of sociodemographic, disease-related and psychosocial factors connected with the severity of PTSD symptom.

Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited 674 newly diagnosed Chinese women with breast cancer at three tertiary level a general hospitals in Chengdu, China between August 2022 and May 2023. And questionnaires about general information, locus of control, social support, coping styles, emotional regulation and PTSD were filled out. Multiple linear regression analysis was applied to probe factors related to PTSD.

Results: The prevalence of PTSD was 13.95%. Significant differences were in PTSD among participants of different ethnicities (t = -2.474,p = 0.017), education levels (F = 8.532,p < 0.001), per capita monthly household income (F = 6.027,p < 0.001), stages of the disease (F = 12.972,p < 0.001). Pearson correlation analysis showed that locus of control, social support, coping style, emotional regulation, and PTSD were significantly correlated. The multiple regression model showed that ethnicity, internality of locus of control, subjective support, negative coping, cognitive reappraisal and expression inhibition can interpret 36% of the variation in PTSD.

Conclusions: The research was one of the early attempts in assessing PTSD symptom in newly diagnosed Chinese women with breast cancer and confirmed some important, possible changeable factors (internality, subjective support, negative coping, cognitive reappraisal and expression inhibition) were related to PTSD, supplying an significant guidance for formulating valid psychosocial interventions for such female population.