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Evaluation of Religious Coping in Tunisian Muslim Women with Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer

Journal of Religion and Health volume 60, pages 1839–1855 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Studies evaluating religious coping in Arab-Muslim populations are few. We aimed to evaluate religiosity and religious coping in a sample of breast cancer women, and to analyze the association between religiosity, religious coping, depression, anxiety, cancer clinical data, and sociodemographic data in our patients. A cross-sectional and descriptive study was conducted over a 4-month period in 61 newly diagnosed breast cancer women. We used the following scales: The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), the Arabic-Brief Religious Coping Scale (A-BRCS) and the Arabic Religiosity Scale. The majority of participants (98.4%) had a moderate to high level of religiosity. A weak correlation was found between religious coping scores and stress, depression, and anxiety scores. Our patients had high scores of positive religious coping, with a mean score of 26.13 out of 28 and used more positive coping than negative coping to cope with the cancerous disease. High levels of affective religiosity were the main predictive factor of positive religious coping. Therapies should reinforce the positive religious coping patterns of breast cancer patients, and detect a possible resort to negative religious coping that may negatively affect the patients’ quality of life.

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Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia

    Feten Fekih-Romdhane, Abir Hakiri, Sana Fendri, Mehdi Balti, Raja Labbane & Majda Cheour

  2. Razi Hospital, 1 rue des orangers, Manouba, Tunisia

    Feten Fekih-Romdhane, Abir Hakiri, Raja Labbane & Majda Cheour

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  1. Feten Fekih-Romdhane
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  2. Abir Hakiri
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  3. Sana Fendri
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  4. Mehdi Balti
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  5. Raja Labbane
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  6. Majda Cheour
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Correspondence to Feten Fekih-Romdhane.

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Fekih-Romdhane, F., Hakiri, A., Fendri, S. et al. Evaluation of Religious Coping in Tunisian Muslim Women with Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer. J Relig Health 60, 1839–1855 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01066-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01066-9

Keywords

  • Religious coping
  • Religiosity
  • Breast cancer
  • Women
  • Islam