Type D Personality and Its Relationship with Perceived Stress Among Women with Breast Cancer Attending a Referral Center in Northern Iran in 2017

Background: The impact of personality traits such as type D personality on the development of psychosomatic illnesses such as cancer has been found by many researchers in the field of health psychology. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the status of the type D personality trait and its relationship with perceived stress among women with breast cancer. Methods: This cross-sectional study enrolled 120 cancer patients during 2017. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria and obtaining informed consent, the patients were selected using the convenience sampling method and evaluated by the Type D Personality Scale (DS14) and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Results: In this study, 69.2% of the patients obtained a score of ≥ 29 in the DS14 questionnaire. Correlation analysis between the components of DS14 and the final score of PSS showed that both social inhibition and negative affectivity had direct correlations with perceived stress (r = 0.35 and r = 0.6, respectively; P < 0.001). Conclusions: One of the most important results of this study was a relatively high score of type D personality among patients with breast cancer and the high contribution of negative affectivity to the perceived stress by patients with this type of personality. The particular status of type D personality traits among cancer patients can be used to design psychotherapy programs for them to prevent disease progression.