Spirituality and quality of life of people affected by cancer

Tamara Walczak, Elżbieta Walczak, Wiesław Kowalewski

Abstract


ABSTRACT

Introduction: The quality of life of patients suffering from cancer is the subject of a vast body of research in the fields of psycho-oncology and health psychology. Much less frequent is research on spirituality as an important factor in patients’ satisfaction with life. Due to the high popularity of the topic but the low number of reports, this study attempted to analyse and quantify the relationship between spirituality and quality of life of cancer patients.

Materials and methods: 94 people were invited to the study, 44 of whom at the time of the study were suffering from various forms of cancer, with the remaining 50 people as a control group (healthy people). A questionnaire was used to evaluate their satisfaction in various aspects of life and determine their levels of spirituality.

Results: Cancer patients assessed their levels of satisfaction with their life, health and physical well-being lower than healthy people. Those affected by cancer obtained higher scores on their strength of faith and intensity of the religious attitude in comparison to healthy people. The results showed that satisfaction with life for healthy people was conditioned by their sense of harmony and meaning of life. In those affected by cancer, the relationship between satisfaction and sense of harmony was stronger, and in addition, the results indicated the importance of ethical sensitivity in the assessment of their own satisfaction with life, which was not observed in the group of healthy people.

Conclusions: The lower satisfaction with life in cancer patients likely resulted from the negative balance of profits and losses in the face of a severe illness and even the risk of death. The greater intensity observed in the dimensions of spirituality may have resulted from the fact that those suffering from chronic or incurable diseases had entrusted their lives to a higher being, in order to gain faith and hope for a further fight against the disease. The patients’ systems of values had changed – satisfaction with life, beyond the sense of life harmony, began to be conditioned by the ethical sensitivity of the patient.

Keywords


quality of life; spirituality; psycho-oncology; cancer

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.21164/pomjlifesci.464

Copyright (c) 2018 Tamara Walczak, Elżbieta Walczak, Wiesław Kowalewski

License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/pl/