The Effect of Sense of Coherence, Self‒efficacy, Anxiety and Depression and Self‒care Behavior on Cancer Patients with Chemotherapy

Background：Adverse effects of anti‒cancer chemotherapy can be damaged and mitigated to some extent by patients’ self‒care behaviors. Therefore, self‒efficacy and related psychological variables are important in health promotion for these patients. Those other psychological variables may include sense of coherence （SOC）, anxiety, and depression, but previous research has not clarified the interrelationships among these factors. 　　Purpose：To help develop strategies for improving the lives of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, the purpose of this study was, first, to measure their SOC, self‒efficacy, anxiety, depression, and self‒care behaviors, and then to identify the impact of and the relations among those factors. 　　Methods：Data were collected from 64 patients who were receiving anti‒cancer chemotherapy at a metropolitan general hospital South Korea. The data were analyzed using t‒test, one‒way ANOVA, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Also, factors associated with self‒care behavior were analyzed using multiple‒regression analysis. 　　Results：Self‒care behavior was significantly correlated with SOC, self‒efficacy, anxiety, and depression. Multiple regression analysis showed that self‒care behavior was associated with self‒efficacy（β＝0.431）and with anxiety （β＝－0.284）. Self‒efficacy and anxiety together explained 37.5％ of the variance in the data. 　　Conclusions：These results show the potential benefits of studies aimed at identifying variables related to self‒care behavior, and they point to the need for longitudinal research on this topic. To improve self‒care behaviors of cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, strategies for increasing self‒efficacy and for reducing anxiety should be developed, applied, and evaluated.