The Role of Meaning, Peace and Faith in Quality of Life Dimensions of Women with Cancer

The aim of this study was to examine the contribution of meaning, peace and faith as spiritual health components in explaining the quality of life (QoL) of patients with breast cancer. One hundred and twenty five patients from 3 hospitals in Tehran participated in this study. After deletion of incomplete data, the data of 117 participants entered in the final analysis. The participants completed the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B; Brady et al., 1997) and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Well-Being (FACIT-sp; Peterman et al., 2002). The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation test and multiple linear regression. The results indicated that all aspects of spirituality had positive and significant relationship with quality of life, except for faith which did not have relationship with social, arm and breast cancer-specific domains. Among three aspects of spiritually, peace had the highest association with the outcomes, although meaning had the highest relationship with patients’ social quality of life. Finally, peace had the most prominent contribution in predicting the overall quality of life. The findings suggest that spirituality may affect patients’ quality of life. Therefore, spirituality is very important in the care of patients with breast cancer, particularly the affective aspect of spirituality (peace) can be the focus of spiritually oriented psychological interventions.